Employing the Carceral Imaginary: An Ethnography of Worker Surveillance in the Retail Industry

Chapter author: Madison Van Oort

Page author: jlc

Summary
Madison Van Oort examines the criminalization of the retail worker through digital surveillance by employing Simone Browne’s idea of “critical biometric consciousness.” The author uses fieldwork data in her role as a service industry worker and as an attendee at a retail loss prevention conference, the NRF Protect, to “trace the tentacles of the carceral state through worker monitoring” (212). Based on interactions with vendors at the conference, Van Oort concludes that vendors use fun, fear, and technoscientific expertise to promote their products, products which view workers as “always already potential criminals” (214). The author also presents social media monitoring and identifies it as a space where “time use” is surveilled and contested between supervisor and employee. Furthermore, sentiment analysis works to determine potential theft risk, but as Van Oort points out, this process “may in fact be measuring the socioeconomic status of the surrounding area” (218). Rather than conceiving these technologies and processes as workplace surveillance, Van Oort asserts it should be more appropriately called “worker surveillance” (original emphasis, 220). Briefly, Van Oort notes that technologies can also work to create opportunities for connection as opposed to the alienation at work.

Connection to other readings
This particular article resonates with Alex Vitale’s The End of Policing. In specific, Vitale discusses the criminalization of individuals—for example, homeless people, mental illness, sex workers, and young students of color. In an example, Vitale mentions that a NYC police union “called on its members and supporters to take pictures of homeless people creating a public nuisance as a way of pressuring city government.” While the context differs, technologies are used to surveil individuals that are already criminalized, much like the retail workers in Van Oort’s study.

Connection to other chapters
Racialized Surveillance in the Digital Service Economy: I think that this reading would fit nicely with this chapter because both chapters discuss surveillance in service roles.