'Surveillance Capitalism' and the Angst of the Petit Sovereign

Abstract

This is a review of Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (Harvard University Press, 2019). It argues that the book serves its readers well as a critical guide to the social and economic imperatives put forward by the platform economy, but that as a work of political economy or social theory for the “new frontier of power”, it does not.

Keywords: Capitalism, surveillance, digital technology, platform economy, law and political economy