Instrumentarian power governs through inducement and reinforcement rather than overt coercion

Evidence

Surveillance capitalism rules by instrumentarian power through its materialization in Big Other, which, like the ancient tyrant, exists out of mankind while paradoxically assuming human shape. Surveillance capitalism’s tyranny does not require the despot’s whip any more than it requires totalitarianism’s camps and gulags. All that is needed can be found in Big Other’s reassuring messages and emoticons, the press of the others not in terror but in their irresistible inducements to confluence, the weave of your shirt saturated with sensors, the gentle voice that answers your queries, the TV that hears you, the house that knows you, the bed that welcomes your whispers, the book that reads you.… Big Other acts on behalf of an unprecedented assembly of commercial operations that must modify human behavior as a condition of commercial success. It replaces legitimate contract, the rule of law, politics, and social trust with a new form of sovereignty and its privately administered regime of reinforcements. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1629

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines instrumentarian power and Big Other as rule through inducement, not terror — a distinctive contrast with totalitarianism.
• XREF: The ‘contract replaced by privately administered reinforcements’ echoes the book’s earlier argument and connects to the reader’s interests in attention and surveillance. — connects to: Contemporary power struggles now turn on engineered behavior modification, not class relations — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 969; Instrumentarian power differs fundamentally from twentieth-century totalitarianism — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1121; Instrumentarian power does not require conformity or mass submission to norms — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1203 (+18 more)

Broader Connections

• Power operates through symbolic influence while coercion abandons symbolic generalization #expands (0.82)
• Modern power fuses instrumentalism with force while premodern force stayed constrained by higher precepts #complicates (0.78) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 386
• Coercion must increasingly disguise itself as improvement to sustain power #qualifies (0.75)
• Power produces subjects and desires rather than merely repressing them #expands (0.72) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 131
• Instrumentalism differs from character traits by requiring an object to act upon #expands (0.72) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 396
• Power operates through passionate attachments, not just constraint #expands (0.72)
• A rearticulated rationality functions as ammunition within power’s mechanics #complicates (0.71)