Liquid Surveillance: The Contribution of Zygmunt Bauman to Surveillance Studies1

Abstract

Liquid surveillance describes well today’s regimes of in ⁄ visibility and is characterized by data-flows, mutating surveillance agencies and the targeting and sorting of everyone. However, the great virtue of Zygmunt Bauman’s work for surveillance studies is that he engages several tasks: he contextualizes what might be called liquid surveillance within the major movements of modern society, recognizes the significance of changing forms of surveillance to the production of social order, encourages serious consideration of the lived realities of in ⁄ visibility, refuses to accept monocausal explanations of the surveillant vision and dynamic, and confronts courageously the ethical and political challenges that surveillance now presents to our world. Bauman’s work on surveillance spans his illustrious career as a social thinker but as yet awaits full exploration and exposition.

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