Beyond panopticism: On the ramifications of surveillance in a contemporary professional setting

This paper provides fieldwork evidence, which solidifies an emerging view in literature, regarding the limitations of the panoptical metaphor in informing meaningfully and productively the analysis of contemporary surveillance and control. Our thesis is that the panopticon metaphor, which conceives of the organization as a bounded enclosure made up of divisible, observable and calculable spaces, is becoming less and less relevant in the age of contemporary surveillance technologies. Through a longitudinal socio-ethnographic study of the ramifications of surveillance ensuing from the implementation of a computerized knowledge management system (KMS) in a Parisian tax/law firm, our analysis points to the proliferation of lateral networks of surveillance having developed in the aftermath of implementation. In this complex and unstable constellation of rhizomatical controls, peers are involved in scrutinizing the validity of one another’s work, irrespective of the office’s hierarchies and official lines of specialization. As a result, games of visibility (exhibitionism), observation (voyeurism) and secrecy (hiding one’s work from the KMS) abound in the office. One of our main conclusions is to emphasize the pertinence of apprehending control and surveillance from angles that take into account the ambiguities, complexities and unpredictability of human institutions, especially in digitalized environments.     

How Small Enterprises in Ghana Have Responded to Adjustment

Monitoring of adjustment has focused on larger, often state-ownedenterprises, many of which have been adversely affected by themore competitive environment. Little is known, however, aboutthe impact of adjustment policies on small firms. Firm-leveldata from Ghana show that the adjustment process was well underway across sectors and within firms and that new investmentwas taking place. The adjustment process had strained most firms'operations—profits were squeezed between rising inputcosts and weak domestic demand and low-cost competing imports.Small-scale industries were forced to become more competitiveto survive. Interviews with owners of small firms revealed considerableentrepreneurial initiative in changing product mix and seekingnewly opened market niches. Sample entrepreneurs fell into twobroad groups: dynamic, successful adapters with good prospects(found mostly among small-scale enterprises) and stagnant producerswho had not adapted to the new competitive environment (foundmostly among microenterprises). For potentially dynamic smallfirms, the most critical constraint was lack of access to financefor working capital and new investment. Many microentrepreneurswere seriously constrained by a lack of purchasing power amongthe lower-income population and by saturation of the sector.     

Applying Ethics to the Tourism Industry

The world's largest industry has received little ethical attention, yet it raises questions of consumer fairness, marketing and environmental and cultural integrity. The author has recently gained an MSc in Tourism Studies from the University of Surrey, and is currently working as an independent consultant in the tourism and leisure sector.     

Migrants' Home Town Associations and Local Development in Mali

We explore the impact of migrants' Home Town Associations (HTAs) on the provision of public goods in Mali. We combine an original dataset on all the HTAs created by Malian migrants in France from 1981 with census data on public goods in all Malian villages since 1976, and we run double‐difference estimations to compare villages with and without an HTA, before and after the creation of the HTAs. We find robust evidence that the provision of schools, health centers, and, to a lesser extent, water amenities has increased significantly faster in villages targeted by an HTA between 1987 and 2009 than in control villages.     

Some Parallels Between Currency and Banking Crises

There is a sizeable literature on the causes of speculative attacks on fixed exchange rates and a large literature on the determinants of bank runs. Surprisingly, these two literatures rarely overlap, even though both types of crises involve attacks on asset price-fixing schemes. This paper draws a number of parallels between the work on currency crises and the work on banking crises and examines some of the new insights that are coming out of a more integrated approach in the aftermath of the Asian financial crises.