Book Review: Pain, pleasure, and the greater good: From the Panopticon to the Skinner box and beyond

• Author: Daniela Barberi
• Date: 01 September 2021
• Published date: 01 September 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567719851841
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

The book is detailed, well-written, and smartly organized. Academic readers will appreciate the

conceptual categories and taxonomies Marx uses to assemble the chapters and themes within the

chapters. Academic readers also will appreciate the detailed footnotes and citations to studies as a

way to organize many of the broader libertarian and justice-related issues the book identifies. Those

same features, however, may make the book less accessible to a lay audience, which likely will labor

through some of the conceptualization. Marx ably attempts to bring some of the arcane points down

to everyday level, providing real-life examples from real-life people. His integration of cartoons,

photographs, and other demonstrative evidence assists in this process. Still I came away from the

book feeling, for example, that many undergraduate students who read this book for a social control

class will muddle through some of the dense writing if they are truly to appreciate the power of

Marx’s argument.

In the final analysis, these criticisms are more stylistic than anything else. The book exposes how

Big Data/Big Tech may be more threatening to personal privacy than Orwell’s Big Brother ever was.

Marx implies that some of the harms from the encroaching surveillance state can be minimized so

long as people are aware of what is happening and that the entities doing the monitoring remain

accountable. The problem is that many of the tactics and technologies Marx outlines are either

immune from, or resistant to, the disinfecting power of sunlight. Because Big Data, Big Tech, and

surveillance capitalism work hand in glove, there is no real incentive to provide awareness. Or, if the

awareness is provided, it comes at the expense of participation in that very technology or service

(i.e., notorious opt out clauses, which link participation to permission to use our data).

Traditionally, surveillance has almost alw ays been about the trade-off between security and

liberty. The more security you want, the more freedom you have to give up. Of course, Benjamin

Franklin once famously said that those who give up liberty for security deserve neither. Marx’s

Windows into the Soul puts this trade-off into stark relief and does so in a way that shows that the loss

of liberty is not necessarily meaningfully accompanied by an increase in security. In fact, the new

surveillance state (especially its private form) erodes both liberty and privacy while arguably

decreasing levels of personal security. The fact that one is always being watched may make one

feel safer, but the feeling is illusory and cannibalized by the invasive reach of technology. For Marx,

the question comes down to how to leverage the utilitarian benefits of this technology in a way that

prevents, or at least slows, the inexorable creep of social control.

Gere, C. (2017).

Pain, pleasure, and the greater good: From the Panopticon to the Skinner box and beyond. Chicago, IL: The University

of Chicago Press, 292 pp. $28.40, ISBN 9780226501857.

Reviewed by: Daniela Barberi , George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

DOI: 10.1177/1057567719851841

Cathy Gere is a professor of history at the University of California, San Diego. The author studied

philosophy and history, and some of her research interests are medical ethics, utilitarianism, psy-

chology, and medicine. The book Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good: From the Panopticon to

the Skinner Box and Beyond is a perfect reflection of her interests and background. This book is a

synopsis about ethical research, the importance of informed consent, and how utilitarian ideas about

achieving the greater good allowed terrible experiments to happen. Gere makes a historical trail of

how utilitarianism has influenced research and different decisions on the political, medical, and

psychological spheres.

350 International Criminal Justice Review 31(3)