Panopticism task

'Panopticism' as a method of correction is theory made famous by Michel Foucault. Foucault, a Panoptic theorist, believes that Pantopticism, relates to 'institutional gaze' which makes us self regulate our behaviour in certain situations.

This theory intrigues me, and although his evidence is backed up through the events of the plague in the 1700's, his views can be applied to modern society. For example, my father works as a manager for a security company. He has a team of workers who report to him, and whom he is responsible for, known as 'security engineers', this is basically a workforce consisting of 7 people who install and maintain the alarm systems put in place. The managing director, a power crazy dictator of the security circuit, has institutional power over all workers, places these engineers under my father's supervision. This subversion of power is a panoptic act in itself as Foucault describes. 'Any individual, taken almost at random, can operate the machine'(Foucault, 1975 p82). The machine refers to the workforce, the production line, the people that make things happen.

Two years ago it was decided by the higher ranks to install tracking devices to all the engineers’ vehicles. This would be in place to track their whereabouts at any given time. The trackers would be monitored 24 hours a day, and give exact locations of where their vehicle was parked. Is this something that should be encouraged? To me, this is a very panoptic act and Foucault's quote backs up this claim. He talks about constantly monitoring and recording information. 'Movements are supervised, in which all events are recorded'(Foucault, 1975 p78) and 'The gaze is alert everywhere' (Foucault, 1975 p76). The only difference from the traditional 'gaze' in which prisoners were constantly monitored by guards, the workers today are monitored by technology, in the form of trackers

This pressures the workforce into self regulating their behaviour, i.e not leaving work early, or having longer lunch breaks, to avoid disciplinary action. If disciplinary action was to be taken such as reduced wages for leaving work early, this would again fall under a panoptic dictatorship. Foucault discusses 'disciplinary projects'(Foucault, 1975 p78) such as separation and segmentation as well as pillory. Reducing wages would again make the worker self regulate to make sure it never happens again or further discipline would take place. Although, I do not know if these forms of surveillance actually maintain healthy relationships among staff.

The last quote here is key to the argument. '...according to a continuous hierarchical figure, in which each individual is constantly located... – all this constitutes a compact model of the disciplinary mechanism' (Foucault, 1975 p78). This is an overall quote which backs up the whole of my argument and can be said to link to the higher ranks constantly observing data presented by the tracking systems at the end of each week to make sure no worker broke the rules put in place.

Bibliography
Foucault, M. (1975) Panopticism