People in Sociology - Faculty

Bill Staples

Professor
Department Chair
Fall 2009 Office Hours:
1:30-3:00 TWF
Personal Web Site
Email
Phone: (785) 864-9414

Professor Staples (PhD Southern California) has interests in social control, privacy, and historical sociology. His recent books include the Encyclopedia of Privacy (2006), Power, Profits, and Patriarchy: The Social Organization of Work at a British Metal Trades Firm, 1791-1922 (2001), and Everyday Surveillance: Vigilance and Visibility in Postmodern Life (2000). Areas: Comparative and Historical, Cultural Sociology, and Political and Economic Sociology.

DO WE LIVE IN A SURVEILLANCE SOCIETY?

Some evidence suggests that we are getting there. Yet, despite developments after September 11, 2001, I reject the idea of a highly coordinated, state-driven, Big Brother monopoly over the practice of watching people. Instead, I focus on the micro-techniques of surveillance and social control, the more commonplace strategies used by governmental but even more likely, private organizations that target and treat the body as an object to be watched, assessed, and manipulated. These are local knowledge-gathering activities often enhanced by the use of new information, visual, communication, and medical technologies that are increasingly present in the workplace, the school, the home, and the community. I argue that, while our inherited, modern ideas about the nature of human beings, deviance, and social control continue to shape the ways in which we keep a close watch on people, a new set of meanings, attitudes, and practices has taking hold that is constituted by and indicative of conditions of postmodernity.

Professor Bill Staples Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

Recent Publications

• Between the "Home" and "Institutional" Worlds: Tensions and Contradictions in the Practice of House Arrest" (with S. Decker). Critical Criminology 18, forthcoming, 2010.
• "Where Are You and What Are You Doing?" Familial "Back Up Work" as a Collateral Consequence of House Arrest." In Who's Watching: Daily Practices of Surveillance among Contemporary Families, edited by M. Nelson and A. Garey, 33-53. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2009.
• Editor-in-Chief, Encyclopedia of Privacy (Volumes 1-2). Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishers, 2007. CHOICE 2007 Outstanding Academic Title http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/GR3477.aspx