To browse Academia. For the past two years, Chinese wholesalers in Aubervilliers have been calling on public authorities to address the problem of street robberies and violent thefts, which they experience on a daily basis. Yet, they have been encouraged by the authorities to ensure their own protection, by — amongst other things — installing surveillance cameras to film the streets.
This is illegal according to French legislation on camera surveillance. Knowing this, why have surveillance cameras been adopted as a solution? This article deals with the widespread use of open-street close-circuit television CCTV systems as a safety policy tool in French cities. To investigate this diffusion, we suggest tackling CCTV as a socio-technical device able to enrol allies beyond the initial circle of technology promoters, including former opponents.
Through an empirical analysis of three case studies, we show that a device can spread on a site provided that the actors in charge of the device appropriate it and discover new practical uses. As appropriation practices give CCTV supporters new arguments to justify its use, CCTV is therefore more legitimized by the possible combinations of different arguments and uses than by its strictly speaking effectiveness to fight against crime.
Many authors have highlighted the need to look at the political economy of surveillance in order to provide a comprehensive picture of our increasingly surveilled societies. However, an analysis that stressed only the material interaction between public and private actors, or the formal relationships between markets, technologies, policy and politics would leave out a broader understanding of the motives and expectations that are taking shape alongside the increase of surveillance mechanisms.
The fact that Barcelona Spain has so far only installed CCTV systems in the city center, in areas used intensively by tourists, reveals a picture that takes the political economy of surveillance beyond the corporation-meets-public-official discourse, which highlights private profit and the role of lobbies and lobbyists as a key reason behind the ascendance of surveillance technologies in public spaces, and addresses a more complex setting where the electoral expectations of local politicians meet the economic interest of the private shop owner meet the political aspirations of local media moguls meet the pressure to sell safe cities in the context of a global drive to see security technology and surveillance as the solution to all urban evils and fast track to winning elections.
