Saying Something: The Location of Social Movements in the Surveillance Society

Abstract

Arguing for social movement-based critiques of public surveillance, this article proposes an alternative approach to the established parameters of research on the contemporary surveillance society. As cities become increasingly organized around a logic of insecurity and fear, there has been an eruption of concern and debate about the expansion of urban public surveillance. But most of the research on this subject has paid little attention to the deliberate, collective forms of political critique raised by anti-surveillance activism. Rather, the predominant focus has been on concerns about privacy rights, civil liberties, and the dilemmas of balancing freedom with security. Moreover, the prevailing critical narrative contends that the radical expansion of surveillance has been largely met with consent from the public. Moving beyond such a discourse of consent, this article examines two examples of cultural interventions that seek to contest the growth of public surveillance, not as a problem limited to the violation of privacy rights but as a process that signifies the metastasizing weaponization of everyday life and the authoritarian circulation of fear. I suggest that the significance of contemporary anti-surveillance activism is found in its embeddedness in broader struggles rather than in the opposition to surveillance as an autonomous political aim.

Theorizing surveillance and social spacingthroughfootball: The fan‐opticon and beyond

“…This article makes an original contribution by utilizing a case study to critically unpack, cross‐pollinate and advance (neo‐)Foucauldian panoptic theorizations (Bale, 1993; Bigo, 2006; Foucault, 1977, 1994) with perspectives from social movement studies (Corry & Reiner, 2021; Jeffries, 2011; Turner, 2021) as applied to the novel and high‐profile case of licenced (Safe) Standing. In line with the fragmentation of surveillance practices in contemporary societies, numerous analyses have explored their relationship to state power and techniques for the regulation of populations (Bigo, 2006; Foucault, 1977).…”

“…In line with the fragmentation of surveillance practices in contemporary societies, numerous analyses have explored their relationship to state power and techniques for the regulation of populations (Bigo, 2006; Foucault, 1977). Much like other securitized and consumer‐oriented contexts of modern life, including airports, shopping malls or city centres (Jeffries, 2011; Klauser, 2017), football‐related spaces should be critically approached as portals for analyses of surveillance. In the case of English football, we have highlighted the ways in which the prefiguring of a new regulatory regime in football is laid bare through new policy‐based outcomes on Safe Standing; one which constitutes the legacy of long‐term regulation and surveillance of football fans across the corporate lifeworld of British society in late modernity.…”

“…Since the late 1990s and particularly post‐9/11, the critical sociological and criminological interest in ‘surveillance’ has grown substantially. The centrality of surveillance in global political debates and contemporary security governance (Jeffries, 2011) has meant that scholars have increasingly analysed surveillance‐related trends in the context of risk management, policing, and implications on civil liberties and democracy (Bauman et al., 2014; Richards, 2013). Others examine the domain that this article predominantly slides into, namely, the ways in which the state employ techniques of surveillance and regulation on populations or social groups in order to maintain state power, enforce social control and ensure obedient citizens (Bigo, 2006; Coleman, 2003; Foucault, 1977).…”

“…This, we argue, enables us to offer an original conceptualisation of football stadia surveillance and regulation, by paying attention to the relational and temporal dynamics, which help us understand social movement outcomes and successes. In doing so, we incorporate under‐researched and undertheorized social movement perspectives into the study of surveillance (Jeffries, 2011).…”

“…Indeed, such physical panoptic structures bring into analytical focus the tensions that may develop between the state and ordinary citizens and their bodies, through processes of resistance or ‘misbehaviour’, as directed through the creation of social movements. Hitherto, the relationship between architectural theories of surveillance and social movements have been underexplained (Jeffries, 2011). By addressing this gap directly in this article, we contend that the social world of association football and its supporter cultures provide fertile sites for mobilizations relating to surveillance inside, and outside, the sport (Turner, 2021).…”