Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Panopticon Kitchen: The Materiality Of Parental Surveillance In The Family Home, Donell Holloway

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This article examines the production and performance of parental surveillance of children’s internet activities within the family home. Through an analysis of qualitative interviews in the family homes of children aged from five to twelve years, the manner in which parents are positioned as ‘instruments of surveillance’ and the materiality of this surveillance are discussed. Parents’ worldly surveillance of their younger children’s internet use in Australian family homes can often be likened to Foucault’s panopticon, where the site of central inspection is often the family kitchen. This is because the physical positioning of spatial dimensions in the standard Australian home …