Description
Book SynopsisVisibility and Control: Cameras and Certainty in Governing addresses the ways in which camera-produced images are used to support governmental authority. The text begins by examining some of the basic levels at which the body interacts with media, and then expands the scope of the analysis to consider the use of CCTV in urban environments and how that affects the experience of space. This shows how the determination of the subject and the observer is affected by interaction with and exposure to images produced by cameras. The relationship between the body and media, between media and the determination of space and how media is used to determine the nature of deviance in contemporary Western culture are evaluated as a means of establishing and maintaining authority through images. Scholars of media theory, surveillance studies, and the social sciences will find this book particularly interesting.
Trade Review“An essential probe into the culture of state surveillance and its sociopolitical applications to evidentiary functions of all kinds in the process of mediatizing security. Covers a broad range of image technologies. Historically thorough, concentrating on the primacy of CCTV used in the London and Toronto G20 summits as prototypes of surveillance and the politics of control. Skilfully grounded in the scholarship of principally Baudrillard, Foucault and McLuhan. Confirms the importance of images in not only enabling but also legitimizing the use of power by the state. Required reading for law enforcement agencies, policy makers, think tanks, lobbyists, civil society entities, and citizens concerned about privacy, rights and freedoms.”
-- Donald J. Gillies, Ryerson University, Toronto; University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland
“Surveillance is everywhere, both as a reality and a topic for debate. It is lauded as a means of protection, criticised as an invasion of privacy, and dramatised in TV police procedurals. But what is it? How does it work? And what is its effect in courts of law? Drawing on everything from film theory to discourse analysis, Jeff Heydon explains all in a profound and important study.”
-- Toby Miller, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Murdoch University
Table of ContentsTable of Contents
Acknowledgments
Section I: The Image of Evidence
Introduction: The ‘I’, the Eye, and the Screen
1. The History of CCTV in Great Britain and Canada
2. Theoretical Elements of Government Surveillance
3. CCTV and the Court System
4. Theoretical Elements of CCTV As a Media Format
6. The Certainty in Images
Section II: The Image As a Component of Governing
7. Governmentality and the CCTV Image
8. Visibility and Control
9. The Performance of Governing
10. Practices and the Distancing of Government From the Population
11. Camera Surveillance As an Exercise of Power
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Author
