Walby, K. (2005).How Closed-Circuit Television Organizes the Social: An
Institutional Ethnography. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 30(2),
189-214.
Walby sets out to conduct an institutional ethnographic study of
closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance in one large suburban mall in
Victoria, British Columbia. The choice of this approach is informed by its
ability to localize problematization of social relations besides its use in examining
the way through which text organizes social relations with outsiders. In the
case of CCTV surveillance, video is the text through which institutional
ethnography is analyzed. This text is both ‘active’ and ‘activated’ to the
extent that it allows people who are not known to each other to from some kind
of relations without ever meeting.
In keeping with the above theme, the author was able to come out with a
number of findings. For one, the discussions with respondents portrayed CCTV
surveillance as a rolling text. The concept refers to the manner in which an
institutional setting guides the manner in which a given text is interpreted. For
the CCTV operators that were part of the study, their institutional setting of
protecting the assets of the mall guided their interpretation of the video
text. Thus, they would always set out to presume all those coming into the mall
as potential thieves until the opposite is proven. Secondly, the text from CCTV
surveillance formed the basis on which the operators initiated relations with
other people outside their local setting of the control room. For example, an
interpretation of the text may lead them to initiate communication with the
police. Lastly, it came out from the study that the video texts informed
discourse and ruling practices. The operators had they formed ways of
categorizing people depending on the images they saw. For example, people from
racial minorities would be more likely to have intensified surveillance.
Theodore,N.,Martin,N.,& Hollon, R. (2006).Securing the City:
Emerging Markets in the Private Provision
of Security Services in Chicago. Social
Justice, 33(3), 85-100.
Largely a descriptive account, the authors set off to detail a
phenomenon that has been taking shape over the years in many parts of the
United States (U.S). It is an explanation of how the private security industry
has been able to exploit an emerging discourse on insecurity to gain a foothold
in a domain that was once exclusive to the public sector. Called the law and
order approach to insecurity, the new discourse points to the failure of government
to discharge its mandate as a justification for other players like the private
security firms to come in. Proponents of the paradigm attribute characterize
the failure of the state not as one that can be remedied by increased
enforcement measures given the bureaucratic inefficiencies that are natural to
the government. The paper also grapples with other peripheral concerns of a growing
private security industry like lower wages of their employees.
The authors had their focus on the phenomenon as it relates to the state
of Chicago. They were able to document how the industry has exploited fears of
insecurity to expand. For instance, the period under review also coincided with
a time when many governments were trying to balance their budgets thereby
necessitating reduction in public security expenditures. This naturally created
a room for private security firms. In addition, the industry was able to
project an image indicating that it was an important player in providing
security. All these would then be augmented by their ability to identify new
security risk areas as a growth strategy. Examples of such areas included the
Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA).
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