Local Governments and the Gathering of Information in England, 1550-1700

FAIN: FA-57894-14

Paul Douglas Griffiths
Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Ames, IA 50011-2000)

Inside Government is about the development of local information cultures in towns and villages across sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England and the increasing reliance of local government on what we term "surveillance" today. It is the first full study of grass roots surveillance in relation to histories of the long-term decline of public/visual representations and articulations of authority, intellectual and administrative cultures of exactness, and deeper faith in institutions to provide remedies for all maladies from crime to sickness. Public representations of authority while still important in 1700 were little-by-little playing second fiddle to more interior forms of administration on a long and twisting road that brings us to where we are today. As such it has significance for how we today approach the historical development of humanistic concerns like subjectivity, sensitivity, character reform, penal cultures, government, and individual freedoms since 1550.