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Life through a lens: Risk, surveillance and subjectivity

Smith, Gavin

Description

Drawing on findings from a two-year empirical study examining the culture of closed-circuit television (CCTV) operation in the UK, this paper analyses how CCTV camera operators subjectively experience the visual media that they work to produce. It seeks to excavate some of the social meanings that these vicarious risk flâneurs ascribe to the telemediated events that they indirectly encounter, and how these ‘narratives of the street’ come to inscribe themselves on the subjectivities of the...[Show more]

dc.contributor.authorSmith, Gavin
dc.date.accessioned2016-06-14T23:19:27Z
dc.identifier.issn2202-8005
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1885/102897
dc.description.abstractDrawing on findings from a two-year empirical study examining the culture of closed-circuit television (CCTV) operation in the UK, this paper analyses how CCTV camera operators subjectively experience the visual media that they work to produce. It seeks to excavate some of the social meanings that these vicarious risk flâneurs ascribe to the telemediated events that they indirectly encounter, and how these ‘narratives of the street’ come to inscribe themselves on the subjectivities of the camera operators in a disciplinary manner. In so doing, the paper reveals the work of watching to be an ambiguous social practice, an activity that far exceeds its formal framing as a dispassionate and standardised procedure. As such, I contend that CCTV camera operators engage in two distinct modes of work – ‘surface’ and ‘deep’ – as they watch the screens and codify the spectacles that are mediated through the camera lens. The ‘surface’ work they enact is officially acknowledged and concerns their focusing attention on the screens to identify harmful behaviours, to capture evidence and to share information with other collaborators in the security network. This mode of work is principally performed for professional imperatives and economic returns. In contrast, the ‘deep’ work rituals they execute are informal in scope and therapeutic in purpose. Such individualised practices are an unseen and unrecognised work relation that mitigates the negative effects of CCTV viewing. They are operationalised through diverse behavioural repertoires which function to insulate the self from its exposure to mediated traumas, and from the contradiction of mobilising ‘(in)action at a distance’. Overall, the paper accentuates the messy realities that hinge on the practice of urban surveillance, showing these realities to be meditated by the vagaries of subjective experience and social relations.
dc.publisherCrime and Justice Research Centre, School of Justice, Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology
dc.rightsAuthor/s retain copyright
dc.sourceInternational Journal of Crime, Justice and Social Democracy
dc.titleLife through a lens: Risk, surveillance and subjectivity
dc.typeJournal article
local.description.notesImported from ARIES
local.identifier.citationvolume5
dc.date.issued2016
local.identifier.absfor160806 - Social Theory
local.identifier.absfor160808 - Sociology and Social Studies of Science and Technology
local.identifier.ariespublicationU3488905xPUB11626
local.type.statusPublished Version
local.contributor.affiliationSmith, Gavin, College of Arts and Social Sciences, ANU
local.bibliographicCitation.issue1
local.bibliographicCitation.startpage82
local.bibliographicCitation.lastpage97
local.identifier.doi10.5204/ijcjsd.v5i1.281
local.identifier.absseo970116 - Expanding Knowledge through Studies of Human Society
local.identifier.absseo940401 - Civil Justice
local.identifier.absseo950408 - Technological Ethics
dc.date.updated2016-06-14T08:39:47Z
local.identifier.scopusID2-s2.0-84959262794
dcterms.accessRightsOpen Access
CollectionsANU Research Publications

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