Surveillance, Capital and Resistance is a major contribution to current debates on the subjective experience of surveillance. Based on a large research project undertaken in a Northern City in the UK and focusing mainly on the use of surveillance in the context of policing and security, the book explores how a diverse range of social groups ('school children', 'political protesters', 'offenders', 'unemployed people', 'migrants', and 'police officers') experience and respond to being monitored by 'new surveillance' technologies such as CCTV surveillance cameras and computers.
The book interweaves surveillance theory with the work of Pierre Bourdieu to argue that the distribution of various forms of 'capital' - economic, social, cultural and symbolic - in any given 'field' operate as a range of goods or resources that structure the dynamics of surveillance practices and power relations, including the ability to contest surveillance. The term surveillance capital is introduced to refer to the tacit knowledge and everyday forms of cultural know-how that allow surveillance subjects to contest surveillance in a variety of local and specific settings.
The book is essential reading for anyone that might be interested in how people experience and respond to the new surveillance measures currently used in the crime control field. It will be key reading for students and academics interested in surveillance studies, childhood studies, media studies, criminal justice and migration studies.
It has been said that the study of surveillance has been particularly good at studying the watchers, but not as good as studying the watched. This book marks a decisive break with Foucauldian perspectives by placing the subjects of surveillance on centre stage.
Based on a large research project based in a Northern City in the UK and focusing mainly on the use of surveillance in the context of policing and security, Michael McCahill explores how a diverse range of social groups ( school children, political protesters, persistent offenders, flawed consumers, global migrants, and police officers ) experience and respond to being monitored by a wide range of new surveillance technologies (CCTV cameras, Electronic Monitoring, and drug testing) used across the public-private divide.
'Surveillance, Capital and Resistance is a fascinating empirical study of the lives of different surveilled subjects. In a rich analysis, it explores their experiences with enormous sensitivity and depth to produce new insights into surveillance as it intersects with class, ethnicity and gender.' - Kirstie Ball, Reader in Surveillance and Organization, The Open University, UK?
'Surveillance, Capital and Resistance is a tour de force which considerably extends our understanding of the everyday experience of living in the surveillance society. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, with school children, migrant workers, police officers and prolific offenders amongst others, Mike McCahill and Rachel Finn have provided us with a fascinating and empirically rich account of surveillance from below. Whilst being methodologically accomplished and theoretically sophisticated, this is a highly readable book full of intelligence and insight. This is sociology at its best and will stand as one of the key texts in the study of surveillance for a long time to come.' - Professor Clive Norris, Department of Sociological Studies, The University of Sheffield, UK
