Slovene Suplement, Vol. 14 - 2007, Suplement

Hello, Where Are You? Mobile Phone and Surveillance in Everyday Life

Gregor Bulc, pages: 75-88

The article discusses mobile phones in the context of power relations and surveillance in one’s everyday-life experiences. Special interest is directed toward individuals’ experiences of structural inequalities and relations of communication control in the light of blurring of the public/private division through extensive use of mobile phones. Based on ethnographic research and semi-structured interviews with service workers in Slovenia, it is argued that private lives of non-material labour force are increasingly subject to interpersonal surveillance determined by power relations in neo-liberal/post-welfare state capitalism, which forces individuals to exercise particular oppositional strategies directed against their constant communicative availability to authorities. In this perspective, interpersonal communication can be plausibly seen as a threat to individuals’ privacy and personal freedoms.

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