Hi,
I'm a research student at Sussex university with interests varied to
the point of incoherence. With respect to surveillance, I'm
concerned with what Steve Wright of Omega (at the conference in
June) politely called the 'intellectual chess' aspects - and in
particular I'm concerned about the reduction of experience to
information. This is a process characteristic of modernity and
postmodernity. It is especially a function of the media; and I would
site surveillance at the sharp end of its spectrum.
It is possible to thunk about a number of the issues raised by
surveillance (and on this discussion list by Mary in particular) in
these terms. For instance, the 'private individual' - if you think
about individual autonomy as residing in control over your own
experience then it can be maintained in the face of even the most
total and invasive surveillance. To a certain extent this is a case
of telling your own story - whether in the pub, or in an
autobiography - as opposed to allowing your experience to be slotted
in as information in an external narrative - whether this is a
newspaper report, security file, customer profile or even something
as mundane as an application form.
For the sake of argument, say we live in a 'two thirds society' and
we (i.e. you and me) are among the 'stakeholders' in that we
compromise our experiences with credit cards, job applications etc.
etc. in return for certain possibilities - both material and
intellectual (doing research in this case). Now the remaining
'third' of society - or rather outside society - have no such stake
and are generally much more hostile to any notion of compromise.
Their experience is expressed in resistance to education, to social
workers, to the police. It is this section of the population which
is most obviously targetted by hard surveillance. Although
materially excluded (to the point of poverty), these people are in
many ways the most culturally resistant to ideology because they
live in a world of experience alien to the official discourses of
information. Nor is this just individual experience, it is often a
collective experience, be it of a 'sink estate', an ethnic minority,
a football 'hooligan' 'firm', a march or a protest camp or whatever.
This is why raves and demos are categorised with football
hooliganism and organised crime because these are all alternative
collective experiences to the narrowly defined areas officially
sanctioned. (The internet forms a different kind of collective
experience - one redeemed from information). And as such they all
form a threat to the status quo.
I think these lines of thought bear particularly closely on Mary's
discussion of New Labour's managerialist conceptions of social
inclusion - the whole package of 'new deal', targetted funds,
surveillance, area-directed policing etc is concerned with bringing
the collective experience of certain areas under control (rather
than with crime and poverty and links between the two). The problem
with collective experience is the possibility of it leading to
political activity. Part of the managerialist strategy is to deny
this vehemently: to insist that the socially excluded are incapable
of helping themslves. This attitude is clearly discernible in Nick
Davies' 'Dark Hearts: The Shocking Truth about Hidden Britain'
(Vintage, 1998, £7-99). Which comes with a back cover recommendation
from our old friend Yack eStraw (as a letter to the Guardian
referred to him today). This book has rapidly gained a currency such
that Polly Toynbee, for instance, can write casually (with no
apparent sense of irony) about New Labour's family policy: 'A mighty
new role for health visitors really will reach into the dark heart
of families on the edge...' (Guardian, Wed 4.11.98). 'Dark Heart', a
book of 'investigative journalism' by a reporter frequently
published in the Guardian, contains two main sections: one on the
Hyde Park estate in Leeds, and one on the particular experiences of
an originally Jamaican family since the 50's and 60's - a
senstionalsit account of crack and prostitution written in Sunspeak:
'He smoked grass with her, helped her to score crack, let her sit on
his car and smoke rocks and he screwed her' (p.245). Both these two
cases are deliberately put forward as being representative of
society as a whole.The claim with respect to the black family is
particularly straightforward: 'The history of this single notorious
family carries within it the stories of the black ghettos of
Britain. It suggests that the idea that young black people have
embraced mugging and pimping and drugs as a way of life is not
simply a racist cliche'(p.193). It's as though the work done in the
70s and 80s by CCCS, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy etc never happened.
Gilroy wrote that he wanted to get away from the endless oscillation
in representation between black criminality and black victimhood.
Davies' account consists solely of such an oscillation. Davies also
shows how the catch-all notion of 'street crime'(see'Policing the
Crisis' Hall et al, 1978)has been extended from black communities to
all socially excluded groups. So that Davies makes no distinction
between burglary in the Leeds Hyde Park estate and the riot and
burning of the pub, 'The Jolly Brewer', run by a police agent. In
short, the book constitutes a direct form of surveillance by
reducing socially-excluded collective experience to information that
is relayed as a support for the message that these people are out of
control, that they can't help themselves and that targetted
intervention is needed.
I hope all this makes some sort of sense. I've deliberately avoided
theoretical terminology so as to keep it focused on surveillance
rather than getting sucked into a particular discourse. Any
feedback/criticism would be welcome.
Nick.
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Nick Hubble, GRC Humanities, Arts B, University of Sussex, Brighton,
UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1273 606755 x2139
Email: [log in to unmask]
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