Histories of Surveillance from Antiquity to the Digital Era

The Eyes and Ears of Power

Andreas Marklund, Laura Skouvig, Andreas Marklund, Laura Skouvig

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000401387
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: Social Sciences

Deploying empirical studies spanning from early Imperial China to the present day, 17 scholars from across the globe explore the history of surveillance with special attention to the mechanisms of power that impel the concept of surveillance in society. By delving into a broad range of historical periods and contexts, the book sheds new light on surveillance as a societal phenomenon, offering 10 in-depth, applied analyses that revolve around two main questions:

• Who are the central actors in the history of surveillance?

• What kinds of phenomena have been deemed eligible for surveillance, for example, information flows, political movements, border-crossing trade, interacting with foreign states, workplace relations, gender relations, andsexuality?

1 Big data in early China

Population surveillance in the early Chinese empires

Rebecca Robinson

In Security, Territory, Population, Michel Foucault traced the genesis of a politics which focused on the regulation of the population to strengthen the state. In order to regulate the population, however, it is first necessary to know the population. Contemporary China has one of the most extensive systems of population surveillance and control in the world, and it continues to increase its surveillance of the population through digital technologies. The ubiquity of CCTV cameras in China lets citizens and visitors know that they are always being watched, while facial recognition software, contactless payments, and other technologies leave a digital footprint of day-to-day activities of individuals. These kinds of surveillance track targeted individuals or groups in order to deter wrongdoing or dissent at all levels of society. The scale of surveillance in contemporary China is made possible by the development and employment of digital technologies that allow the government to gather and analyse vast quantities of data. However, the desire to have such a thorough understanding and record of the population has much longer roots in Chinese history. Despite not having such advanced technologies, imperial dynasties from earliest times accumulated large amounts of data about their populations, albeit in analogue formats.

The question of the population was of prime concern to the rulers of the first Chinese empires, the Qin (221–207 bce) and Han (206 bce–220 ce), who established sophisticated systems to gather information through which to control their population of up to 57.7 million people.¹ These methods included population and tax registries, regulation of travel and commerce, a 20-tier system of rank, an elaborate legal system, as well as the systems of linked liability, also known as mutual responsibility (lian zuo 連坐). While the rulers of early China lacked the sophisticated technology and infrastructure that is enjoyed by contemporary states, they, too, desired to monitor the population to ensure that every individual met their tax and corvée labour requirements and to eliminate crime and sedition, which were seen as disruptions against the social and cosmic order. In order to keep track of the population and to make the population aware that someone was always watching, the Qin and Han rulers implemented legal regulations and forms of population management which transformed the population at large into the eyes and ears of the sovereign. Through these systems, the population became active agents in their own surveillance.

The panoptic mechanism

Foucault introduces the panoptic mechanism in Discipline and Punish, illustrating how surveillance becomes “permanent in its effects” although “discontinuous in action.”² The inmate in a panoptic prison or the subject in an institution will never know exactly when they are being watched, but there will always be the possibility that someone will be watching at any given time. As such, the individual will feel compelled to behave as though they were being watched at all times. The observer is invisible and through this position of invisibility is able to observe multiple subjects at one time, and, in the modern era, the observer is themselves also under observation.³ Foucault places the advent of panopticism at the intersection between the ancient and the modern; with the “gradual extension of the mechanisms of discipline throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries … the formation of what might be called in general the disciplinary society.”⁴ The modern era distinguishes itself from the premodern through its privileging of surveillance over spectacle:

Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests bodies in depth; behind the great abstraction of exchange, there continues the meticulous, concrete training of useful forces; the circuits of communication are the supports of an accumulation and a centralization of knowledge; the play of signs defines the anchorages of power; it is not that the beautiful totality of the individual is amputated, repressed, altered by our social order, it is rather that the individual is carefully fabricated in it, according to a whole technique of forces and bodies.⁵

Disciplinary society is thus defined by the relationship between the individual and the state, rather than the community and public life.⁶ Foucault’s description thus far of the panoptic mechanism and the development of a disciplinary society is canon. He elaborates on the development of both panopticism and the different orientations of societies, that is, juridico-legal, disciplinary, and security, and we have tended to take this sequence of domination as gospel.⁷ In the 1977–78 Security, Territory, Population lectures, however, he notes that the mechanisms of each societal orientation existed simultaneously in each of the periods and that the transformation from juridico-legal to disciplinary and to security societies was not purely evolutionary; rather, it was a question of which sets of mechanisms came to dominate at a particular time. Foucault was, quite consciously, only concerned with mechanisms of power that appeared in the western historical tradition, and our understanding of the interplay and development of these different mechanisms is thoroughly complicated by considering them in the context of non-Western societies.

Before leaving Foucault and turning our gaze to the political philosophers of early China, it is worth noting that Foucault acknowledges that, at least with regard to the panoptic mechanism, it is the technology rather than the intention that is new:

The idea of the panopticon is a modern idea in one sense, but we can also say that it is completely archaic, since the panoptic mechanism basically involves putting someone in the centre – an eye, a gaze, a principle of surveillance – who will be able to make its sovereignty function over all the individuals [placed] within this machine of power. To that extent we can say that the panopticon is the oldest dream of the oldest sovereign: None of my subjects can escape and none of their actions is unknown to me.⁸

The desire to know each individual of the population and to be able to monitor her or his actions and ensure that she or he always remained trapped within the network of the state appealed to rulers of early China just as much as Western Europe. And like their European counterparts, the rulers of early China attempted to make this dream a reality.

Theories of surveillance in early China

The early Chinese kingdoms and empires had a surprisingly elaborate bureaucratic apparatus with which to keep track of the population. During the Spring and Autumn (771–453 bce) and Warring States (453–221 bce) periods, contending states – seven, by the late Warring States period – sought ways to strengthen their states in order to increase their territory and population and, ultimately, to gain hegemony over the others.⁹ As such, this was a period of not only intense internecine warfare, but also of great development in military technology and strategy and political theory. During this period, a number of intellectuals travelled between the states, offering their ministerial services to kings. These intellectuals often left behind records of their political and philosophical theories, either written by themselves or compiled by their disciples after their deaths.¹⁰ From these texts and from historical records of the states, we know that there were many theories of population management, some of which were implemented, while other remained at a purely theoretical level.

Through a series of political and military reforms, the state of Qin was able to conquer its rivals and form the first empire in 221 bce. Central to their programme of political reform was the management and surveillance of the population, which sought to ensure that all individuals were working towards the state’s goals. While the Qin empire (221–210 bce) did not long outlast its founding emperor, the majority of its bureaucratic and legal systems were adopted by its successor, the Han (206 bce–220 ce), at least during the first two centuries of Han rule. In what follows, I will discuss the development of theories of population surveillance and their connection to imperial power and then turn to the application of these theories to the Qin and early Han periods.

From the earliest times, we can see that the thinkers of early China identified the importance of the sovereign knowing the actions of the population, in order to properly govern their state. These early texts discuss the problems inherent in effectively monitoring the population with the limited technological means available to the state. The Mozi 墨子, a text which represents the doctrines of the fifth to third century bce followers of Mo Di 墨翟,¹¹ provides an elaboration on the notion that the population could be used to monitor itself:

When the Son of Heaven, feudal lords, rulers and the leaders of the populace had already been established, the Son of Heaven put forth a decree, saying: “Whenever you hear or see something good, you must inform your superior. Whenever you hear or see something bad, you must also inform your superior. What the superior approves of, you must also approve of. What the superior condemns, you must also condemn. When the people are good, enquire about it and reward them. When the people are at fault, admonish them. Value uniformity with those above and do not act in collusion with those below. If those above get to know [about this], they will reward you. If the ten thousand people hear [about this], they will praise you. If, on the other hand, you hear or see something good and do not inform your superior, or if you hear or see something bad and also do not inform your superior, if you are unable to approve of what your superior approves of, or unable to condemn what your superior condemns, if the people are good but you are unable to enquire about and reward them, if your superiors are at fault but you are unable to admonish them, if you collude with those below and act against those above, then if those above get to know [about this], they will reprove and punish you and if the ten thousand people hear [about this], they will condemn and vilify you.”¹²

The people were thus expected to not only agree with the Son of Heaven, but also inform on anyone who did good and those who did w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction: histories of surveillance from antiquity to the digital era
• 1 Big data in early China: population surveillance in the early Chinese empires
• 2 “Consciences are not to bee forced, but to bee Wonne”: the inward turn in Elizabethan homiletic discourse and the legal debate over the ex officio oath in the Court of High Commission, 1570–1593
• 3 Sexual surveillance in Paris and Versailles under Louis XIV
• 4 Convict surveillance and reform in theory and practice: Jeremy Bentham versus New South Wales
• 5 Surveillance on the assembly line: communist resistance to modern production at the Stollwerck Chocolate Factory, 1924–1930
• 6 Securing the state: the First World War and the birth of the modern surveillance state in Scandinavia
• 7 Civil liberties, state police wartime measures, and the case of “the Six”
• 8 Citizen informants, glitches in the system, and the limits of collaboration: Eastern experiences in the Cold War Era
• 9 The historical ubiquity of surveillance
• 10 The archipelago of global surveillance – without States – in the Western world
• Index