Who Are Surveillance Workers?
· “data-deciphering ‘optometrists’” that are “responsible for the daily operation of surveillance” (Smith, 2012, p. 107)
· “attribute both the products of their labor and the wider manufacturing process with classificatory codes and meaning” (Smith, 2012, p. 107)
· “contribute their interpretive energies in exchange for the accumulation of tacit knowledge, emotional stimulation and a salary” (Smith, 2012, p. 107)
· engage in “the art of monitoring, interpreting and making sense of social reality” (Smith, 2012, p. 107)
· “those responsible for the regulation and management of social reality, the mitigation of social arbitrariness and the anticipation of unknown futures” (Smith, 2012, p. 108)
· Research is often more focused on “excavating the power relations and socio-political implications associated with new envisioning technologies” rather than the more invisible surveillance worker (Smith, 2012, p. 109)
What is Surveillance Work?
· “that which is conducted for social development, participation, pleasure, proficiency, and that which is conducted by professional laborers to accomplish organizational imperatives and to acquire income” (Smith, 2012, p. 108)
· “both a mundane activity performed by social actors in their bid to identify and become aware of cultural conventions, rules, norms and customs, and an organizational activity performed by professionals in their bid to meet a variety of bureaucratic ends and ideals” (Smith, 2012, p. 108)
· An organization based mode of work “in terms of the prioritization and expansion of information collection techniques and corollary emergence of a specialized human/non-human labor force tasked with ‘reading,’ categorizing and deciphering this data such that it becomes expert and intuitionally-relevant knowledge” (Smith, 2012, p. 108)
· “is constituted by countless observational strategies and calculation techniques” (Smith, 2012, p. 108)
· Practiced by almost every public vocation like medical practitioners, teachers, social workers, tax inspectors, citizens, soldiers, police officers, police informants, camera controllers, and electronic monitoring officers (Smith, 2012, p. 108)
· Practiced by the private sector in places like energy firms, surveyors, consumer loyalty programmers, private investigators, and social researchers (Smith, 2012, p. 108)
· Basically, “any occupation or trade requiring an employee to collect, assess, and process information – and action particular responses based on that data – is in effect asking that individual to conduct surveillance work” (Smith, 2012, p. 108)
· The “type and intensity” vary depending on “the precise aim and function of the observation; specifically, whether it does or does not involve the systematic monitoring of human beings and processing of personal information, and whether such practices have significant implications for the subject’s mobility or well being” (Smith, 2012, p. 109)
· We need to consider how this labor is “enacted, performed, managed, regulated, experienced and understood” (Smith, 2012, p. 109)
References:
Smith, G. (2012).