Andrzejewski, Anna Building Power (1572336315)

This wide ranging study draws on fundamental concepts from Michel Foucault, even as it revises and extends them. For Andrzejewski, surveillance is any act of sustained, close observation of others that is intended to transform behavior-of those under surveillance as well as those who initiate it. This definition allows her to illuminate the many ways in which those in positions of power have attempted to influence the actions of others, whether to create and enforce hierarchical boundaries between people, as in the workplace, or to affirm bonds between like-minded individuals, as at Victorian-era revivalist camp meetings. Thinking about surveillance in these terms also allows Andrzejewski to consider ways in which it has influenced diverse American spaces, ranging from obvious settings relatively removed from daily life (like penal institutions) to everyday spaces familiar to most Americans (like middle-class houses). Moving across the era, as well as across building types, she shows that as the goals and contexts for surveillance changed, so did its realization in the built environment, resulting in a complicated landscape that influenced both everyday life and the principles of modernism.