Inauthentically Intense: Coveillance and Consumer Culture among Speedsurfers

Abstract

This article presents material from a small-scale ethnographic study of a community of windsurfers that use GPS (Global Positioning System) technology to monitor and share their performance online. Following recent debates within Surveillance Studies, these practices are categorised as a form of coveillance. The argument explores the subjectivity produced by the introduction of GPS technology and social media usage in the context of windsurfers. Suggesting that this form of coveillance is yielding a particular consumer culture among its members, the article explores how the GPS-social-media assemblage boosts the desire to consume.

Video Streaming and Internalized Surveillance

“…However, studies on the forms of subjectivity that playful surveillance practices produce are few. Building on the notion of lateral coveillance (Mann, Nolan, and Wellman 2003), Palmås (2015) studied the lateral surveillance techniques of speedsurfers and proposed that those techniques were a way to intensify the experience of oneself as a speedsurfer. What this suggests for my study is that surveillance does not necessarily produce only disciplined individuals but also active doers whose experience may be possible just because of the surveillance techniques they are using.…”

“…The second level of surveillant individualism, coveillance, builds on peer-to-peer surveillance (Rainie and Wellman 2012). This is also defined as lateral surveillance (Palmås 2015), and it illustrates the impossibility of differentiating between the surveilled and the surveillors. The third level of surveillant individualism is bottom-up surveillance, or sousveillance (Mann, Nolan, and Wellman 2003), which offers a way to resist surveillance.…”

“…The same tendency has also been noticed by previous research (Lyon 2006;Strangelove 2010) but its consequences remain unclear. Particularly interesting is what type of subjectivity (Palmås 2015) and agency it creates for participants.…”

Introduction: The State of Sousveillance

“…A simple keyword search of Surveillance & Society's past issues, through issue one of volume eighteen, reveals that the term "sousveillance" has appeared in dozens of published pieces (and, of course, the term has also been used in papers published in numerous other venues). Although a plethora of surveillancerelated terminology has grown up within the surveillance studies literature over the past few decades, including related terms like inverse surveillance (Brucato 2015), coveillance (Palmås 2015;Mann, Nolan, and Wellman 2003), and reciprocal surveillance (Newell 2014), sousveillance appears to have attracted considerable attention and staying power within surveillance studies research. Browne (2015: 21) used the term "dark sousveillance" to refer to ways in which black epistemologies had been used to contend with "the tools of social control in plantation surveillance or lantern laws" or other forms of antiblack surveillance-for example, practices that "appropriated, co-opted, repurposed, and challenged [these antiblack social control measures] to facilitate survival and escape."…”

Watching You Watching Me: Lateral Surveillance in Singapore

“…While documenting cutting-edge forms of surveillance is important and at times make for an interesting read, such writings are "divorced from larger questions and too often unaware of research in nearby fields" (Marx 2016:14). Examples of these kind of work include in-depth explorations of drones (Wall and Monahan 2011), social media (Trottier 2016), selftracking practices (Sharon and Zandbergen 2016), and even windsurfers who speed-surf (Palmas 2015).…”