University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Pinkerton's National Detective Agency and the information work of the nineteenth-century surveillance state

Bilansky, Alan

Content Files
pinkerton_infocult_bilansky.pdf

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/97810

Description

Title
Pinkerton's National Detective Agency and the information work of the nineteenth-century surveillance state
Author(s)
Bilansky, Alan
Issue Date
2017-08-12
Keyword(s)
Surveillance state, Security, Network, Detective, Reports, Spy
Date of Ingest
2017-08-14T16:08:22Z
Abstract
Private security contractor for business and government, Allan Pinkerton acted centrally in early chapters of the history of the security state. The operative and the report, Pinkerton’s principal surveillance technologies, are analyzed here in relation to each other and in their historical development as information technology, drawing on Pinkerton's fictionalized accounts of cases, secret reports and other Agency documents. Pinkerton management was consistently preoccupied with strict compliance of operatives, their deployment in a network, and the regular submission of reports. This study suggests information can lead to uncertainty and the surveillance state was and is compartmentalized, entrepreneurial, and other-than-public.
Publisher
University of Texas Press
Type of Resource
text
Genre of Resource
Article
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/97810

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Illinois Research and Scholarship (Open Collection) PRIMARY
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