Fall 2008

WGS 322 • SURVEILLANCE & SOCIAL CONTROL

Course Description

This course will provide an overview of theories in the sociology of social control, with a focus on risk, power, ethics and surveillance. We will examine historical transformations in social control and the distributions of power in U.S. and global contexts, with attention to gender, race and class. Course topics include: prisons and punishment; the gaze, voyeurism and reality television watching; the Internet; travel and state borders; privacy; biometrics and the body. Students will be encouraged to develop critical reading and analytical skills. Through the use of popular film, the Internet and other visual media, students will be challenged to better understand how surveillance practices inform modern life. Importantly, students will interrogate the operation of gender in practices of social control.

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