Surveillance, Capital and Resistance

Surveillance, Capital and Resistance is a major contribution to current debates on the subjective experience of surveillance. Based on a large research project undertaken in a Northern City in the UK and focusing mainly on the use of surveillance in the context of policing and security, the book explores how a diverse range of social groups (‘school children’, ‘political protesters’, ‘offenders’, ‘unemployed people’, ‘migrants’, and ‘police officers’) experience and respond to being monitored by ‘new surveillance’ technologies such as CCTV surveillance cameras and computers.

The book interweaves surveillance theory with the work of Pierre Bourdieu to argue that the distribution of various forms of ‘capital’ – economic, social, cultural and symbolic – in any given ‘field’ operate as a range of goods or resources that structure the dynamics of surveillance practices and power relations, including the ability to contest surveillance. The term surveillance capital is introduced to refer to the tacit knowledge and everyday forms of cultural know-how that allow surveillance subjects to contest surveillance in a variety of local and specific settings.

The book is essential reading for anyone that might be interested in how people experience and respond to the new surveillance measures currently used in the crime control field. It will be key reading for students and academics interested in surveillance studies, childhood studies, media studies, criminal justice and migration studies.

Michael McCahill was born in Glasgow but moved to Hull at the age of four and has lived in the city all his life. He joined the Department of Social Sciences in September 2001, having completed his BA Sociology (First Class Honours), MA Criminology and PhD all at the University of Hull. Dr McCahill's main research interests focus on the social impact of ‘new surveillance’ technologies and the mutually reinforcing relationship between crime, surveillance and media. His books include The Surveillance Web (Willan) (winner of the British Society Criminology book prize 2003) and Surveillance and Crime (Sage) with Roy Coleman.

Rachel L. Finn has lived in various cities in the USA, briefly in Ireland and in Manchester, UK for the last 10 years and received her BA in Sociology and Psychology from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. Dr Finn started an MA/PhD programme at Northeastern University in Boston, USA and transferred to the University of Manchester where she finished her PhD. After her PhD Dr Finn worked as a Research Associate at the University of Manchester and the University of Hull. Since 2010, she has been working for Trilateral Research & Consulting, a London-based research firm specialising in providing policy and regulatory advice about security, surveillance, privacy and the ethical impacts of new technologies.