Probing the Surveillant Assemblage: on the dialectics of surveillance practices as processes of social control.

Recent dialogue on the contemporary nature of information and data gathering techniques has incorporated the notion of assemblages to denote an increasing convergence of once discrete systems of surveillance. The rhizomatic expansion of late modern ‘surveillant assemblages’ is purported not only to enable important transformations in the purpose and intention of surveillance practices, but to facilitate a partial democratization of surveillance hierarchies. Seeking to account for the forces and desires which give rise to, and sustain, surveillant assemblages, this paper explicates the workings of a dialectic embedded in many surveillance practices to reveal a polarization effect involving the simultaneous leveling and solidification of hierarchies. Empirical data from the intensification of welfare monitoring are presented to illustrate the dialectics of surveillance practices as processes of social control.