the 'willing participation of subjects'
"When we replace the panoptic apparatus of the prison with a more plausible scenario of say the surveillance of urban streets through the use of CCTV cameras (Koskela 2003) the agency of those under surveillance is no less important and indeed becomes even more of a mitigating factor. The population of most urban streets is much more diverse than that imagined by the Panopticon. Their background knowledge varies along with their understanding of what counts as conformity and what is a recognizable sign of the supervisors' presence. It follows also that the more citizens know about where the cameras are and what counts as appropriate behavioral norms the more they would be able to feign conformity in the camera's field of vision. Indeed, we can even anticipate following Erving Goffman's discussions of the con artist, that no one would know more about the situation than the individual bent on some kind of transgression. Perhaps even more pertinent to the post-9/11 security situation is that the individuals one hopes to detect are the very individuals that have the best chance of evading detection, especially given more and more automated surveillance systems incorporating fewer and fewer human supervisors. Again, I wish to stress the doublesided nature of stories of surveillance as subjection. The more one knows about how one is supposed to behave the more one is able to conform, but by the same token one is also more able to feign conformity."The Return of Panopticism [PDF]
Supervision, Subjection and the New Surveillance
Bart Simon
-
link ::: wood s lot :::
