Three theories of surveillance capitalism: control, exploitation, reproduction

The recent notion of ‘surveillance capitalism’ has become one of the main tools for theorizing digital mediations, making it possible to account for the proliferation of surveillance devices in a wide variety of forms and social contexts. The term is polysemous and can in fact cover very different theoretical models. We can identify two main strategies used to conceptualize the role of surveillance in contemporary capitalism: a weak conception of surveillance as the control of labour, and a maximalist conception of surveillance as a new form of exploitation, at odds with traditional forms of capitalism. We propose a third conception of surveillance as reproduction, by showing how, despite their apparent diversity, the spread of surveillance systems helps to reproduce political, economic and social institutions that are threatened by the crisis yet determine the functioning of capitalism.