Theorizing surveillance in the UK crime control field

Drawing upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant, this paper argues that the demise of the Keynesian Welfare State (KWS) and the rise of neo-liberal economic policies in the UK has placed new surveillance technologies at the centre of a reconfigured “crime control field” (Garland, 2001) designed to control the problem populations created by neo-liberal economic policies (Wacquant, 2009a). The paper also suggests that field theory could be usefully deployed in future research to explore how wider global trends or social forces, such as neo-liberalism or bio-power, are refracted through the crime control field in different national jurisdictions. We conclude by showing how this approach provides a bridge between society-wide analysis and micro-sociology by exploring how the operation of new surveillance technologies is mediated by the “habitus” of surveillance agents working in the crime control field and contested by surveillance subjects

The social impact of surveillance in three UK schools : 'angels', 'devils' and 'teen mums'

Drawing upon the preliminary findings of a broader ESRC-funded project on the 'surveilled', this paper examines the social impact of 'new surveillance' technologies on the lives of school children living in a Northern City. We conducted fifteen one-hour 'focus groups' with eighty-five 13 to 16 year-old children in three schools. The pupils were asked a range of questions designed to document their awareness, experience and response to 'surveillance' as 'school children', but also as 'regular citizens' going about their business 'outside' of the school. We show how children's experience and response to surveillance varies across 'social positionings' of class and gender, before going on to discuss the implications of our findings for the major theoretical debates on surveillance

Beyond the ‘all seeing eye’: Filipino migrant domestic workers’ contestation of care and control in Hong Kong

This paper draws on ethnographic data about Filipino migrant domestic workers’ perceptions of and responses to the use of surveillance cameras in the home to intervene in recent debates about surveillance, care and social control. On the one hand, our participants disclose what following Gary Marx (1981) we refer to as the gendered ironies of care and control. Digital surveillance practices in the home not only produce tactics for evading control but also reduce the capacity of migrant workers to deliver the best possible care that is ostensibly the basis for the deployment of new forms of watching. On the other hand, the responses we document here speak to critiques of the Foucauldian vision of surveillance derived from the panopticon that are ‘abstract, disembodied and distrustful’. In contrast to the Benthamite reading of God’s all seeing eye, Filipino migrant workers invoke a relational vision which speaks to connectedness, trust and the possibility of mutual concern. While the use of covert surveillance cameras especially was perceived as undermining the trust necessary for care relationships, some respondents used the devices to provoke face to face encounters deemed necessary to re-establish relations of trust

Not interesting enough to be followed by the NSA: An analysis of Dutch privacy attitudes

Open curtains and a careless attitude. The Dutch are described as holding an indifferent stance towards privacy in the aftermath of Snowden’s revelations of far-reaching government surveillance. But are Dutch reactions as aloof as often claimed? This study provides an in-depth overview of privacy attitudes in the Dutch debate about the National Security Agency (NSA) leaks, showing a greater variety of sentiments than anticipated. A qualitative frame analysis and a quantitative descriptive analysis resulted in six frames, which convey distinct privacy attitudes. Online and offline as well as professional and non-journalistic content in the debate displays a different distribution of frames. The frames, ranging from an “End justifies the means” attitude to an anxious fear of an “Orwellian dystopia”, are placed in a larger framework as the research demonstrates the connection to existing theories about privacy and surveillance. Dutch discussions about the NSA revelations often display a trade-off narrative balancing safety against privacy, and include (de)legitimisation strategies. These outcomes are in line with previous studies about mediated surveillance debates, which indicates that privacy attitudes transcend national boundaries. However, the inclusion of user-generated content adds an individual dimension to the existing body of research and reveals a personal perspective on surveillance issues

CCTV: beyond penal modernism?

In recent years, a number of writers have suggested that contemporary strategies of crime control have called into question some of the central features of ‘penal modernism’. The return of punitively orientated ‘ostentatious’ forms of punishment whereby state representatives try to bring penal policy more in line with public sentiment is implicated (Pratt 2000; 2002). For other writers, the apparent erosion of state power accompanied by ‘new modes of governance’ based upon ‘risk management’ rather than the normalization of individual offenders is at the centre of a shift towards a ‘late modern’ or ‘postmodern’ penality (Feeley and Simon 1994; Smandych 1999; Garland 1996). This article draws upon research conducted for the European Union-funded URBANEYE project to ask how the rapid growth in the use of CCTV in the UK fits in with contemporary debates on the emergence of a ‘post modern’ penality (Garland 1996 2001; Hallsworth 2002; Lucken 1999; O’Malley, 1999; Simon 1994). We begin with a review of the theoretical literature on visual surveillance. Next we draw upon our empirical research to provide an account of the extent and sophistication of CCTV usage in publicly accessible spaces in London. Finally, we examine the ‘practice of video surveillance’ in four different settings – an open-street CCTV system, a transport system (mainline railway station), West London Mall and South London Mall

Plural Policing and CCTV Surveillance

This chapter aims to make a contribution to recent debates on the 'governance of security' (Johnston & Shearing, 2003) by drawing upon empirical research conducted by the author and other writers on 'plural policing' and the construction of closed circuit television (CCTV) surveillance networks.  The chapter attempts to avoid the tendency in some of the 'governmentality' literature to 'airbrush out the state' (Hughes, 2007, p.184), whilst at the same time showing that the aims and intentions of dominant state forces and elites are not always realised in practice.  The chapter also tries to avoid any simplistic notion of a shift in policing strategies from 'crime fighting' to 'risk management'.  The aim instead is to show how the construction of surveillance networks is blurring the boundaries of the 'public-private' divide along the 'sectoral', 'geographical', 'spatial', 'legal' and 'functional' dimensions (Jones & Newburn, 1998), giving rise to a plural policing continuum