Shoshana Zuboff's Surveillance Capitalism Applied to the Systemised Self – Part 5, Masters Series

Abstract

This article applies Shoshana Zuboff's (2019) theoretical framework of surveillance capitalism to the concept of the Systemised Self (Galu & Kairos, 2026a). Zuboff's landmark work identified the emergence of economic logic in which human experience is harvested as raw behavioural material, processed into predictive commodities, and sold to institutional clients seeking to modify behaviour at scale. By situating the Systemised Self within this framework, the article proposes that the contemporary surveillance capitalist apparatus competes directly with self-agency, impacting authentic agency via targeted behavioural nudges. The article proceeds through a biographical and intellectual account of Zuboff, an analysis of her core theoretical contributions, a genealogy of antecedent theories, a definition of the Systemised Self, a theoretical application, and a review of key critiques. It concludes that the Systemised Self represents both a theoretical terminus to the instrumentarian logic Zuboff describes and embodiment of the complete loss of epistemic sovereignty in an era of increasingly pervasive behavioural extraction. Insights developed throughout include the argument that surveillance capitalism monetises the gap between declared preferences and actual behaviour; that, the Systemised Self then closes deliberately, mistaking curated captivity as absolute freedom.

Keywords