Surveillance in contemporary capitalism

Looking from the Political Economy of Communication

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30962/ec.2592

Keywords:

Capitalism, Surveillance, Subsumption of Labour, Datification, Hegemony

Abstract

This paper discusses surveillance in contemporary capitalism, presenting a critique of Shoshana Zuboff's concept of surveillance capitalism, based on the Political Economy of Communication. It argues that surveillance should be seen as part of the problem of hegemony, contributing centrally to: i) expansion of the subsumption of labour in capital, in a “supervised subsumption”; ii) reduction of the circulation time and the randomness of the merchandise, based on data processing; iii) deepening of social domination, given the technological changes that make up a new structure of social mediation.

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Author Biography

Helena Martins, Universidade Federal do Ceará, Fortaleza, Ceará, Brasil

PhD in Social Communication from the University of Brasília (UnB, 2018), with a sandwich period at the Superior Institute of Economics and Management (Iseg) of the University of Lisbon. Professor of the Postgraduate Program in Communication at the Federal University of Ceará.

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Published

07-07-2022

How to Cite

Martins, H. (2022). Surveillance in contemporary capitalism: Looking from the Political Economy of Communication. E-Compós, 25. https://doi.org/10.30962/ec.2592

Issue

Vol. 25 (2022): E-Compós 2022

Section

Artigos Originais

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Copyright (c) 2021 Helena Martins

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