Surveillance, Capital and Resistance by Michael McCahill Rachel L. Finn

Author:Michael McCahill, Rachel L. Finn [Michael McCahill, Rachel L. Finn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Criminology
ISBN: 9780415688635
Google: ePEjAwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 13715958
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-11-26T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

As Gary T. Marx (2009) has pointed out, surveillance is a dynamic process which means that resistance strategies involve a ‘temporal’ dimension with opposition coming at different stages in the surveillance process. The protesters in our research utilized (institutionalized and objectified) cultural capital to make ‘discovery moves’ by reviewing academic literature and newspapers to familiarize themselves with the latest surveillance technologies and legal framework surrounding the regulation of these technologies. They challenged surveillance at the stage of ‘adoption’ by drawing upon social networks and connections (with Trade Unions, journalists, senior police officers, lawyers, etc.) to challenge the introduction of ID cards, body scanners at airports, and filming at the US Military Base. At the stage of ‘data collection’ they attempted to interrupt the flow of information from the body (Ball, 2005) through everyday strategies of ‘avoidance’ and blocking’. However, they also utilized their knowledge of the law to challenge surveillance at the point of encounter by carrying extracts from the Human Rights Act and meticulously reading the small print of documentation produced by the authorities to impose a curfew order. At the stage of ‘analysis and interpretation’, protesters were informed by social contacts that the authorities had them under surveillance and they pursed challenges through the courts to challenge the legality of surveillance measures used against them. Protesters also drew upon social connections in the juridical and journalistic fields to discover the ‘fate of their data’ through Freedom of Information and subject access requests. There are of course structural limitations to the resistant strategies pursued by protesters and the police retain a dominant position in the crime control and juridical fields3. However, as relatively privileged players in the crime control field, the activists we interviewed ‘refused to be cowed’ and utilized social, economic and cultural capital to contest surveillance in numerous ways. In the next chapter, we explore how another social group (plural policing actors) that enjoys a relatively privileged position within the crime control field experience and respond to being monitored.

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