In Overseers of the Poor, John Gilliom confronts the everyday politics
of surveillance by exploring the worlds and words of those who know it
best-the watched. Arguing that the current public conversation about
surveillance and privacy rights is rife with political and conceptual
failings, Gilliom goes beyond the critics and analysts to add fresh
voices, insights, and perspectives.
This powerful book lets us in on the conversations of low-income mothers
from Appalachian Ohio as they talk about the welfare bureaucracy and its
remarkably advanced surveillance system. In their struggle to care for
their families, these women are monitored and assessed through a vast
network of supercomputers, caseworkers, fraud control agents, and even
grocers and neighbors.
In-depth interviews show that these women focus less on the right to
privacy than on a critique of surveillance that lays bare the personal
and political conflicts with which they live. And, while they have
little interest in conventional forms of politics, we see widespread
patterns of everyday resistance as they subvert the surveillance regime
when they feel it prevents them from being good parents. Ultimately,
Overseers of the Poor demonstrates the need to reconceive not just our
understanding of the surveillance-privacy debate but also the broader
realms of language, participation, and the politics of rights.
We all know that our lives are being watched more than ever before. As
we struggle to understand and confront this new order, Gilliom argues,
we need to spend less time talking about privacy rights, legislatures,
and courts of law and more time talking about power, domination, and the
ongoing struggles of everyday people.
