The Accomplishment of Spatial Adequacy: Analysing CCTV Accounts of British Town Centres

The number of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in British town centres has rapidly increased in recent years. These increases are mirrored in Europe and North America. In Britain many of these cameras videotape town centres, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. How do CCTV systems account for the space of the town centres in which they operate? What theoretical sensibilities can we use to engage with CCTV spatial accounting? To what extent do terms such as ‘professional,’ ‘legal’, ‘sociotechnical’, and ‘mundane’ enable adequate renditions of spatial-accounting activity? In this paper I will argue that engagement with the accomplishment of mundane public flows and specific incidents of accountable otherness can initiate a discussion of these questions and initiate an alternative to panoptic renditions of CCTV. The discussion will seek to draw together a potentially tense and disruptive theoretical combination of ethnomethodology and science and technology studies.

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