Open-Street Camera Surveillance and Governance in Canada

Rather than relying on an undifferentiated version of Michel Foucault's panopticon or conceptualizing surveillance as a straightforward top-down measure, this article contends that open-street closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance is generated from numerous and overlapping social positions. As a regulatory project within the overarching context of governance, open-street CCTV can be generated from above, from the middle, or from below. By "above," what is meant is some hierarchical political or administrative body. Business entrepreneurs constitute the "middle." By "from below," I mean that citizens themselves seek out regulatory measures for their own communities through moral entrepreneurship, often in collusion with local news media. But the inverse is also true: power moves through populations, and thus citizens' groups have the power to contest regulatory measures in their communities. I substantiate these theoretical claims with media, questionnaire, and interview data regarding the proliferation of open-street CCTV in Canada. Drawing from the sociologies of governance, of risk, and of critical media studies, and offering a more nuanced theoretical trajectory than theories that reproduce top-down conceptualizations of power, politics, and communication, I challenge the reigning theoretical models pertaining to open-street CCTV surveillance so as to demonstrate how regulation through camera surveillance can be generated from any number of social positions.