The technology and the artefacts of social control – Monitoring criminal and anti-social behaviour through and in media cultures

Abstract

The potential afforded by contemporary forms of surveillance to monitor vast amounts of information raises a number of problems, including ‘who or what’ should be distinguished as the subject of surveillance and how is the extension and intensification of surveillance to be legitimated without encroaching on the sensibilities of those who deem themselves innocent. It is argued that the ‘chav’, one of the latest variants of an underclass discourse to emerge in the United Kingdom, provides an example of how an ideological figure can be employed both to justify the introduction of disciplinary surveillance technologies and become the proposed identification of targets for such apparatus. Following an outline of the term underclass and a guide to the language and imagery of the ‘chav’, the argument presented in this chapter is developed and represented through an examination of a range of media representing and responding to anti-social behaviour. The utilisation of media to render visible and represent those seen as responsible for anti-social and criminal behaviour is both an application of new technologies of surveillance and a re-invention of older forms of collective and communal punishment, control and regulation. What these examples share is the communication of a frame that equates ‘chavs’ with ‘anti-social’ behaviour and surveillance as a central component of any strategy for community safety. Thus, rather than the existence of ‘chavs’, or any allegedly threatening ‘other’ requiring surveillance, it is argued that it is surveillance that requires the existence of the ‘chav’. Put another way, if ‘chavs’ did not exist, then, for the exponents of surveillance at least, they would have to be invented.

Citation

Connor, S. and Huggins, R. (2010), "The technology and the artefacts of social control – Monitoring criminal and anti-social behaviour through and in media cultures", Chriss, J.J. (Ed.) Social Control: Informal, Legal and Medical (Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, Vol. 15), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 109-128. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1521-6136(2010)0000015008