SURVEILLANCE TOWN: SOCIAL INCLUSIONEXCLUSION THROUGH SURVEILLANCE, ‘THE
DIGNITY OF WORK’ AND INCOME MANAGEMENT
Dr Mike Dee, Queensland University of
Technology, Brisbane.
 m.dee@qut.edu.au
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BACKGROUND….
My 2008 PhD: Young People, Public Space &
Citizenship
 Surveyed 1100 High School students in the
Brisbane and Logan areas using a survey
instrument designed by Logan City Youth Council
after doing social planning work with them
 Some survey questions were asked about CCTV,
whether respondents felt safe, if there should be
more CCTV….
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SURVEILLANCE ..
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As David Lyon said yesterday, it’s important to place surveillance studies in
the widest context..
This paper discusses the situation of welfare claimants, constructed as
faulty citizens and flawed welfare subjects at the receiving end of complex
and multi-layered, private and public, forms of monitoring and surveillance
aimed at securing socially responsible, consuming and compliant
behaviours.
In Australia as in many other western countries, the rise of neoliberal
economic regimes with their harsh and often repressive treatment of
welfare claimants operates in tandem with a growing arsenal of CCTV and
assorted urban governance measures (Monahan 2008, Maki 2011).
The capacity for all forms of surveillance to intensify social inequalities
through the lens of CCTV and other modes and methods of electronic
monitoring is amply demonstrated in the surveillance studies literature,
raising fundamental questions around issues of social justice, equity and
the expenditure of societal resources (Norris and Armstrong 1999, Lyon
1994, 2001, Loader 1996).
KEY POINTS:
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A repertoire or constellation of surveillance techniques and apparatus exists in cameras,
data capture, loyalty cards and other devices, such as the mosquito and E-Nose.
Some populations are subject to special welfare surveillance and a stable of other
measures such as CCTV.
Places such as Logan near Brisbane get mobile CCTV cameras that can climb trees and
lighting poles as well as the measures outlined in the Federal Budget., including
compulsory participation in income management for teenage parents and parents aged
23 if on welfare for two or more years,
Add to this the BasicsCard (costing over $4000 per person to implement) used in the
Northern Territory and a particular level of monitoring, surveillance and capture of data is
reached.
The amount of data about purchasing choices made by BasicsCard is substantial but
where does it go and how and is it retained?
BasicCard money can only be used to buy ‘essentials’. The proportion is generally 50%,
but may be up to 70%. Generally, 100% of any lump sum payments (such as the Baby
Bonus) is quarantined. A minimum spend of $5 is required. (ACOSS 2011).
Income Management is an historic break with cash payments from 1944, previously
sustenance was obtained from police stations (ACOSS 2011).
The Gillard Government is committed to Social Exclusion (even though the minister had to
be coached on its meanings) but as Levitas (1998) and Lister (2000, 2004) have noted,
social inclusion based on getting a (any) job is a narrow exclusionary policy frame offering
a diminished sense of citizenship
LOGAN: A PLACE AND POPULATION TO BE
WATCHED……
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Recently the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Logan City
Council (near Brisbane) had reason to celebrate having
just bought for the people of Logan a Rapid Action
Deployment Surveillance System or RDSS. For
$110,000 the local ratepayers get two mobile cameras
that climb poles or street lights and surveill public
space, providing high quality, real time images to a
monitoring facility and also hand held and in vehicle
devices (Logan City Council). Logan City already has
something of a growing reputation for CCTV coverage
which has “ballooned in the last decade from 8 to more
than 300-one (camera) for every 1000 people in Logan
(Albert and Logan News 21/07/11).
FIXING PLACES LIKE LOGAN….
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Decisions about the installation and /or extension-upgrade of CCTV
systems are barely concerned with questions of civil liberties and
largely devoted to obtaining a technical fix to irksome and persistent
urban issues whose antecedence may lie in poverty and
disadvantage but through reconstruction, become matters of
governance and control on behalf of ‘the responsible majority’ as
Clavell (2011:525) notes:
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“CCTV has become an increasingly popular policy solution to security
problems in urban environments: as part of a broader project to
promote ‘civility’ and eliminate ‘anti-social behaviour’. The need to
impose ‘proper behaviour’ and sanction deviance is the discourse
used to justify and legitimize the need to control what people do in
open, public space through the electronic lens-as well as an
increased police presence and powers”.
‘NEW PATERNALISM’..
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The 2011-12 Federal Budget seeks to end the ‘corrosive’ effects of welfare through ‘requiring
responsibility’ and emphasising the importance of the ‘dignity and purpose of work’ (Gillard
2011:5). In a strange inversion of the much feared spectre of the alleged ‘nanny state’ a ‘new
paternalism’ has instead been unleashed through income management in targeted areas of
substantial economic and social disadvantage, underpinned by a costly bureaucratic
surveillance, monitoring and sanctioning infrastructure (Tomlinson 2010, 2011, Buckmaster
2011:2).
Responsible behaviour is to be ‘induced or supported’ with a basics shopping card holding a
percentage of a welfare claimant’s entitlements, to be spent only on approved items
(Buckmaster 2011:2).
This is a key use of the notion of ‘responsibilisation’ to change the behaviours of certain
welfare claimants.
Resistance, especially by Indigenous people points to loss of dignity around the imposition of
income management, complexity and loss of agency in using the card and the contradiction of
being made independent by becoming dependent or as Minister Macklin has stated:
‘Welfare should not be a destination or a way of life. The Government is committed to
progressively reforming the welfare system to foster individual responsibility and to provide a
platform for people to move up and out of welfare dependence.’
Comment by Elaine Peckham for NTCOSS (2011) :
“When the Intervention began I should not have been put on Income Management as I didn’t
have any children in my care. I was put onto Income Management regardless of me being a
grandmother, responsible and someone who worked and looked after my family all my life.
People should have had a choice before being put on Income Management but we were not
given that choice. We had no choice at all whatsoever. And it’s still happening.”
BUDGET 2011–12: WELFARE REFORMS TO
CHANGE PERSONAL BEHAVIOUR
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The Budget contains a number of measures that aim to bring about change in the personal behaviour of welfare recipients.[1]
This reflects the growing emphasis by the Government on addressing what it describes as the ‘corrosive’ effects of welfare.
That is, the idea that while welfare is necessary for the alleviation of disadvantage it also has a role in maintaining or possibly
even causing disadvantage.[2]
During the 2010 election campaign, Labor’s main welfare policy committed a re-elected Gillard Government to the task of
modernising Australia’s welfare system through ‘creating opportunity’ and ‘requiring responsibility’.[3] The policy referred to
the need ‘to spread the dignity and purpose of work, end the corrosive aimlessness of welfare and bring more Australians into
mainstream economic and social life’.[4]
A central theme of government policy in this area has been the need to support or induce the adoption of more responsible
behaviours in particular communities by, for example, placing conditions on eligibility for welfare payments or on how welfare
payments may be spent.
Funding for the above measures totals $288.4 million. The measures are an indication of the Government’s growing
commitment to the role of personal behavioural change in overcoming disadvantage (sometimes described as ‘new
paternalism’).[10] It is also notable that several of the measures involve interventions in particular disadvantaged
communities. This reflects growing interest on the part of the Government in what are known as ‘location based initiatives’—
programs that draw on research indicating that disadvantage tends to cluster in particular geographical locations.[11]
The specific measures raise a number of questions, including how the Government decided which locations would be included,
whether exemptions from the measures are possible and how the measures will be evaluated (what would constitute
success?).
General questions related to the growing emphasis on new paternalist measures include: what limits ought there be on the
nature and extent of interventions in the lives of welfare recipients; and, to what extent can welfare reforms cause individuals
to change their behaviours in a meaningful and enduring way (is there a risk of creating even further dependency?)
(Buckmaster 2011, Parliament of Australia)
TOWARDS TOTAL SURVEILLANCE?
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Writing in 1973, Rule makes some important and prescient observations on
surveillance for contemporary society:
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‘’Total surveillance, under anything like the present state of technology and
social organization is impossible. One simply cannot envisage how it would
be feasible for any regime literally to watch everyone all of the time, to
digest the resulting information continually and fully, and to remain eternally
ready to respond. It is possible, however, to imagine what one might call a
‘central clearing house’ for mass surveillance and control, without straining
the limits of present-day technology and organizational skills. Under such a
system, all major agencies of mass surveillance and control within a single
society would render unlimited assistance to one another. Information
generated in the relationship between the client and any one system would
automatically be available to any other system ‘’(p.319).
KEY THEMES-CLOSING…
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Measures to reframe, monitor, control & restrict public space in the urban
sphere are replicated in the domain of neo-liberal social policy making in
Australia and elsewhere.
Peter Roger’s presentation on the UK riots yesterday and the casting of
policy responses in the wake of these events-a key discourse of a
responsible community is an informing community, in a re-assertion of
individual and community responsibilities over rights.
Maki (2011) notes that welfare surveillance has been regarded in
surveillance studies as neither good or bad-but she says it amounts to war
on the poor and a direct assault on the least privileged in society and some
are more surveilled than others.
This connects with early forms of welfare surveillance in the 1601
Elizabethan Poor Laws, onwards (Lyon 2004).
Architecture of distrust as opposed to trust –as Lyon noted yesterday,
suspicion and monitoring is costly to maintain and counter-productive?
Monahan (2008):220 notes different forms of surveillance affect different
populations-the affluent may be involved in market research, while the poor,
in accessing services , encounter “invasive scrutiny of their purchases and
discipline of their behaviour”
INEQUALITY OF SURVEILLANCE?
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As Norris and Armstrong (1999) noted presciently, the
surveillance gaze is far from neutral:
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“The gaze of the cameras does not fall equally on all users of
the street but on those who are stereotypically predefined as
potentially deviant, or through appearance and demeanour,
are singled out by operators as unrespectable. In this way
youth, particularly those already socially and economically
marginal, may be subject to even greater levels of
authoritative intervention and official stigmatisation, and
rather than contributing to social justice through the
reduction of victimisation, CCTV will merely become a tool of
injustice through the amplification of differential and
discriminatory policing “(p.279).
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO PUBLIC SPACES?
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Harris (2004:121) notes that much of the “public domain is
commercialized and privately funded and run”, even if on an
outsourced, contracted nature, on behalf of a branch of government.
The comment below by Mizen, Bolton and Pole (1999) about the U.K.
is also highly applicable to the Australian context:
“Where there were once municipal recreation grounds, youth clubs,
community discos, free or below cost sport and extra-curricular
activities, as well as subsidized transport to get there in the first
place, there now exist private leisure centres, bowling alleys, multiscreen cinema complexes, clubs and theme pubs, accessed by
privatized bus companies or taxis. The point to underline is that
children’s leisure is increasingly constituted according to the dictates
of the market, whose only entry requirement is the possession of
money” (p. 433).
HARRIS ON (2006) ‘NEW TIMES’
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“New times are characterized by a sense of danger and
uncertainty about the world, and this is expressed in the
management of public spaces. At the same time the
new economy has required young people to move
beyond their designated spaces of the home, street, and
school into other sites such as new workplaces, training
programs, and new spaces of consumption. In one
sense there are now more places where young people
are seen. However, while the number of places that
young people are able to occupy has expanded, these
are also subject to increased regulation” (p.100).
SOME DEFINITIONS
Public Space: could be anywhere in an urban area
such as streets, parks, civic spaces and buildings,
spaces between spaces, shopping malls (mass
private space) Public space is increasingly
regulated and contested especially around young
people’s use of it-see also Occupy.
 CCTV: numerous kinds, closed and open street
surveillance systems, now in colour, microwave
enabled, with speakers.
 Cyberspace…
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SOME CONTEXT, ISSUES, APPROACHES
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CCTV in the UK-more than 4.2 million cameras, following Bulger murder in1993 and
development of technology in Northern Ireland
Australia following in the same vein with attempts to access every CCTV camera in Australia
Prominent security-industrial complex linked to civic authorities abuses of CCTV images,
privacy, ownership and evidential issues
A range of concepts, frames and theories can be applied to these issues from sociology of
youth, queertheory, urban sociology, governance, social planning, social geography, cultural
sociology, rights, social justice, surveillance studies-consider Foucault, (1986) (especially the
notion of heterotopia) or sites that undo the usual order of space, Castells, Sennett, etc
Key critique of CCTV is against it’s own claims as preventing crime-see also London riots
Social sorting/ordering of public space through surveillance and application of exclusionary
practices and preferred types-exclusion of hoodies and ‘poor’ types, seating at coffee shops is
not free
‘Flawed consumers’ or ‘vagabonds’ (Baumann 1998) as the ‘dangerous classes’ also
Brisbane’s Southbank Corporation
‘Fortress City and destruction of public space (Davis 1990)
‘Surveillance Creep’ (Nelkin & Andrews 2003)
TONKISS ON PUBLIC SPACES
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A way of categorising public space is suggested by
Tonkiss (2005:67) in the square indicating “collective
belonging”, the café “representing social exchange” and
the street, a place marked by “informal encounter”. The
square is any public space “provided or protected by the
state” and is open to all “as a simple expression of
citizenship”. The second kind of space helps to facilitate
contact between humans in a broadly social setting that
can be a pubic or private space. The third and final form
of space, the street, is seen as the “basic unit of public
life”, a routine if necessary conduit for “marginal
encounters” based on equal rights to be in public space
(Tonkiss 2005: 68).
IN CLOSING..SOME VIEWS ON URBAN LIFE
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In The Life and Death of Great American Cities. Jacobs discusses the “daily
life of the urban streets’’ and how social participation is essential to the
successful transition by young people to adulthood. She further talks of
“sidewalk contacts”, made possible by the provision of comfortable seating
and peaceful rest areas, as “the small change from which a city’s wealth of
public life may grow” (Jacobs 1965: 41).
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Writing about the late 1960s and remarking on the drive for urban
conformity discernable in a number of American cities, Sennett in The Fall
Of Public Man (1976), agues that homogeneity should be resisted and
diversity and difference encouraged because, in his words, the daily
experience of public space “…should be gritty and disturbing rather than
pleasant’’ (Sennett 1976:143).
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Public spaces should be truly inclusive and ‘co-produced’ with users to
generate spaces that are safe, used and dynamic, rather than a pastiche of
of village life likely to be of little relevance, or overtly surveilled.
REFERENCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY
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FROM THE DATA…………
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Students were also asked if “they considered themselves to be gay, lesbian or
bisexual and/or Indigenous, homeless, disabled or marginalised/other”. While a
large number gave a nil response, the highest response was by participants
identifying themselves as “marginalised/other people” (62).
The meaning of this response is not entirely clear, but may suggest that respondents
considered themselves to be “marginalized/other(ed”) in relation to using public
space and possibly life in general.
The next largest response group, people who stated they were gay, lesbian or
bisexual, is where a number of respondents shared what may be sensitive
information about their perceived sexuality. Students self identified as: lesbian (3),
bisexual (9), gay (6).
A relatively small number of respondents identified as being Indigenous, homeless,
or as having disabilities. Eight respondents identified as belonging to some or all of
these categories.
These responses indicate a little of the complexity of the lived experience of young
people in using public space. They also say something of the multiple social worlds
they occupy, wherein some view safety and public space quite differently from
others, or may feel less included and respected (White and Wyn 2004, Harris 2006,
Hillier and Harrison 2007). The needs of queer young people in particular for good,
safe and interesting places and spaces has been/is largely overlooked in
academic/planning literature (Dwyer 2008, Hillier and Harrison 2007).
GLBTQ young people are “the subjects of particular technologies of exclusion which
work to mark them as deviant and prevent them from full participation in public life”
Hillier and Harrison 2007:83).