Situated surveillance: an ethnographic study of fisheries inspection in Denmark

Abstract

Drawing inspiration from Science and Technology Studies (STS), this article develops an understanding of surveillance as a situated activity. Thus, concepts developed by feminist, Donna Haraway, and actor-network theorist, Bruno Latour, are used to establish an analytic attitude in which the ‘situatedness’ of vision and technologies is seen as a salient feature of surveillance. Empirically, the article examines how surveillance on a Danish fisheries inspection ship is situated in a specific way. This example depicts surveillance as fragile, limited, and partial, and as an ongoing and sometimes difficult achievement, which involves the work of many different actors. It shows how friction and resistance can be part of surveillance processes, and it questions the clear distinction between ‘the observer’ and ‘the observed’. Finally, it shows how, in this instance, surveillance is not only a matter of control, but also of care. The notion of situated surveillance makes the development of overly general conceptions of surveillance (e.g. some interpretations of the Panopticon) problematic. Thus, it urges the researcher to study surveillance empirically, in specific settings.