Rhizomatic Surveillance

According to Haggerty and Ericson (2000), Deleuze and Guattari (1987) use the idea of rhizomes to describe assemblage and its interconnected gathering of different forms of information. Rhizomes are "plants which grow in surface extensions through interconnected vertical root systems" (p. 614), and rhizomatic surveillance is a the idea that surveillance is a series of "interconnected roots which throw up shoots in different locations" (p. 614). Surveillance technologies like cameras can be placed all around a city but all feed to one location. Thus, there is an assemblage of seemingly unity technologies which align "computers, cameras, people and telecommunications" (p. 614). While Orwell and Foucault talk about either a state or a person (or at least understood as a limited number of people in control) of surveillance from the top down, the idea of rhizomatic surveillance connotes that the hierarchies of observation are disrupted and now both institutions and the general population can become surveillers (p. 616).

References:

Haggerty, K.D., & Ericson, R. (2000). The Surveillant Assemblage. British Journal of Sociology, 51(4), 605-622.