Surveillance is everywhere. Be it in workplaces monitoring the performance of employees, social media sites tracking clicks and uploads, financial institutions logging transactions, advertisers amassing fine-grained data on customers, or security agencies siphoning up everyone’s telecommunications activities, surveillance continually finds new causes, new effects, and new reasons to endure. Because of growing awareness of the central role of surveillance in shaping power relations and knowledge across social and cultural contexts, scholars from many different academic disciplines have gravitated to surveillance studies and contributed to its solidification as a field.

Torin Monahan and David Murakami Wood’s Surveillance Studies is a broad-ranging reader that provides a comprehensive overview of the dynamic field. Across fifteen sections, the book offers original selections of key historical and theoretical texts, samples of the best empirical research done on surveillance, introductions to debates about privacy and power, and cutting-edge treatments of art, film, and literature. While the disciplinary perspectives and foci of scholars in surveillance studies may be diverse, there is coherence and agreement about core concepts, ideas, and texts. The Reader maps these core dimensions and highlights various differences and tensions. In addition to a thorough introduction, which maps the development of the field, this volume offers helpful editorial introductions for each section and brief capsules to frame the included excerpts.

With over 70 classic and contemporary texts, Surveillance Studies is the definitive introduction to this vibrant and growing field and an essential resource for scholars.