Windows into the Soul - by Gary T Marx (Paperback)

About the Book

There is more third-party reading of email correspondence being done now than ever before: cybertools like algorithms may allow Google s gmail service to place ads on your screen, but this immediately conjures less savory possibilities lurking in the wings. The same holds for smartphones, a trove of your photo album, record library, personal journal, and correspondence desk, all vulnerable to surveillance, not to mention software cookies that allow Viacom and other big brothers to track your actions across the internet. As the Supreme Court prepares to hear cases about digital privacy, Gary Marx s book will serve as a touchstone for discussions of how extractive technologies like computers, spectrographs, video lenses, and the like can troll through our personal lives. This book provides a language and a conceptual guide to the understanding of surveillance structures and processes. Windows into the Soul touches on themes such as the public and the private, secrecy, anonymity, confidentiality, accountability, trust and distrust, the social bond, the self and social control, and power and democracy. As one of our ms. readers says, nobody in this expanding field of surveillance studies has read as much, reflected on its meaning, and written about these trends with so much insight, wisdom, and humor. Here, Marx sums up a lifetime of careful thinking and research on the concepts, technologies, and themes of surveillance. The account is richly laced with examples, many of them up-to-date (drones, anyone?), and, cumulatively, all of them useful fodder for anyone interesting in grappling with newer issues such as social media surveillance as well more traditional initiatives. Marx shows how surveillance penetrates social and personal lives in profound ways."

Book Synopsis

We live in an age saturated with surveillance. Our personal and public lives are increasingly on display for governments, merchants, employers, hackers-and the merely curious-to see. In Windows into the Soul, Gary T. Marx, a central figure in the rapidly expanding field of surveillance studies, argues that surveillance itself is neither good nor bad, but that context and comportment make it so.

In this landmark book, Marx sums up a lifetime of work on issues of surveillance and social control by disentangling and parsing the empirical richness of watching and being watched. Using fictional narratives as well as the findings of social science, Marx draws on decades of studies of covert policing, computer profiling, location and work monitoring, drug testing, caller identification, and much more, Marx gives us a conceptual language to understand the new realities and his work clearly emphasizes the paradoxes, trade-offs, and confusion enveloping the field. Windows into the Soul shows how surveillance can penetrate our social and personal lives in profound, and sometimes harrowing, ways. Ultimately, Marx argues, recognizing complexity and asking the right questions is essential to bringing light and accountability to the darker, more iniquitous corners of our emerging surveillance society.

For more information, please see www.garymarx.net.

Review Quotes

"Marx's book is a brilliant summary of a vast literature and a clear and much needed conceptual clarification in the still emerging field of surveillance studies. His sage writing is very lucid, entertaining and informative. It's a great singular read or an excellent companion to other well received and relevant surveillance studies including Joseph Turow's The Aisles Have Eyes."-- "Robert Lilly Northern Kentucky University"

"The book provides a thoughtful discussion about the ethics of surveillance, as well as the balancing act governments and corporations maintain. . . . This book meets a very pressing need: it provides a thorough and fair examination of different theories about surveillance, and allows the reader to benefit from exposure to multiple perspectives. Marx knows he is dealing with a complex and constantly changing subject, and he does not try to offer simplistic solutions. Rather, his approach in writing Windows into the Soul is to encourage further conversation and further research."-- "Donna Halper, IEEE Technology and Society Magazine"

"Windows into the Soul offers comprehensive and critical reflections on the shapes and trends of human surveillance. . . . Marx outlines his analytical uncertainties to the reader, [which] makes Windows refreshing and even more insightful because it leaves the discussion unfinished, enticing the reader to pose new questions and alternative ways of organizing the phenomenon and the field. . . . Marx might have intended for Windows to be an encyclopedic-conceptual handbook of surveillance for researchers of the field, but it also turned out to be a rigorous and inspiring exemplar of Weber's methodological strategies."-- "Marcella Siqueira Cassiano, Asian Review of Criminology"

"Anyone who has listened to Marx talk, or spent any time on his website, will know what a truly prodigious knowledge and understanding he has of surveillance in contemporary society. This book ... is demonstrative of this impressive grasp on the subject. Marx's framework is both practical and approachable. . . . Windows into the Soul is of tremendous value. In addition, the work is entertaining throughout with a number of cartoons, references to popular culture, and a rich sense of irony. This is a valuable work that provides an analytic framework for approaching surveillance studies while avoiding the temptation to find simple solutions or offer easy judgments. It should find its way onto the shelves of every serious scholar and student of surveillance."-- "Kevin Macnish, Surveillance and Society"

"In Windows into the Soul, Marx takes a critical social science approach to the study of surveillance and social control. Marx's exploration of the field of surveillance studies is cumulative and inclusive, involving empirical, theoretical, ethical, and practical questions. References to literature, cinema, and pop culture are woven throughout the book, adding humor and illustration to Marx's close study of a fascinating topic. . . . Marx concludes that the ideal is 'a positive information society based on fairness, dignity, care, openness, trust, security, autonomy/participation, and communality, rather than a negative surveillance society based on unfairness, commodification, coercion, secrecy, suspicion, insecurity, domination/repression, and atomization.'"-- "Claire Gartland, EPIC Alert"

"In his most recent and grandest work on the subject, Marx wrestles with the behemoth that is surveillance. . . . He offers a conceptual map for scholars to tackle the murky moments of the new surveillance, from Snowden to polygraphs. Employing unorthodox methods for sociology, including fictional chapters, the work is an important contribution to surveillance studies and to the field of sociology as a whole. Highly recommended."-- "Choice"

"Marx achieves his goal of providing the reader both a conceptual map and an encyclopedic reference source of surveillance in modern Western society. . . .Researchers seeking to experiment with a sociological toolkit designed to scrutinize behaviors and motives in search of meaningful similarities will certainly benefit from this book."-- "Asian Crimonology"

"Marx who presents multiple aspects for his readers makes huge contribution to surveillance studies oeuvre thanks to this book.....Windows Into the Soul is an indispensable reference guide for academicians studying surveillance." -- "Sule Karatas Ozaydin, Moment Dergi"

"Marx, a leading figure in surveillance studies for more than twenty-five years, has at last published his maxime magnum opus, Windows into the Soul. The book breaks new ground and establishes some of the parameters of this expanding disciplinary area. It reflects his broad vision, expansive imagination, infectious curiosity, commitment to sensitive scholarship and to social justice, grasp of several cognate disciplines, awareness of the significance of popular culture, and an irrepressible sense of humor and grace. Marx's perceptions are uncompromising and he engages, rather than shying away from, difficult issues. This work will continue to inspire new generations of surveillance scholars--whatever their disciplinary backgrounds or theoretical perspectives."-- "David Lyon, author of Surveillance after Snowden"

"Marx's magnum opus, Windows into the Soul, comes at an opportune time.... Marx's capstone on his decades-long engagement with the topic helps identify points of obstruction in the field.... In breaking surveillance down into its constituent elements and detailing their composition, Marx's work is simply without peer. Each chapter of the book is dedicated to a different broad dimension of surveillance."-- "Keith Guzik, Society Magazine"

"Marx's book, Windows into the Soul, provides a telling look into the underlying normative principles of a free society faced with incredible advances in technology coupled with a new and extremely worrying global terrorism threat. . . . Marx is a notable scholar with an impressive body of work in this area. His expertise shows throughout, as does his encyclopedic knowledge of the classic works and principles of social science. . . . The quality of the ideas and the questions posed are very enlightening and well worth the effort to read. . . . The best part of the book comes in the final chapter. It is here that the moral, ethical, and normative theoretical issues are laid out in a well-organized fashion."-- "Craig Curtis, New Political Science"

"The book focuses on a crucial topic for democratic ideals --the dignity of the person and the type of society we are becoming or can become.... In focusing on the discovery, disclosure, concealment, access and protection of personal data the book contributes to the sociology of information."-- "Dilemas - Revista de Estudos de Conflito e Controle Social"

"What Marx does in Windows into the Soul is create parameters for the social scientific study of surveillance in the twenty-first century. . . . Windows into the Soul is a snapshot of the work of an original, wide-ranging scholar who has done much to develop the study of surveillance."-- "Kevin Walby, American Journal of Sociology"

"Windows into the Soul: Surveillance and Society in an Age of High Technology by Gary T. Marx is the culmination of the author's fifty-plus-year career as a sociologist studying surveillance and privacy....The most useful and accessible parts of the book are the fictional case studies peppered throughout."
-- "Shannon Roddy Law Library Journal"

About the Author

Gary T. Marx is professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of Undercover: Police Surveillance in America. His writings have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New Republic.