Francisco Klauser
University of Neuchâtel, Geography, Faculty Member
The digital age is also a surveillance age. In turn, questions of surveillance are always also questions of geography. "Surveillance & Space" investigates, conceptualizes and problematizes the complex ways in which surveillance is bound... more
The digital age is also a surveillance age. In turn, questions of surveillance are always also questions of geography. "Surveillance & Space" investigates, conceptualizes and problematizes the complex ways in which surveillance is bound up with space, from the disciplinary space of Bentham's panoptic prison, to the spatially articulated gaze of CCTV camras, and to the fluid spatialities of control that characterise today's world of big data.
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The paper investigates the multiple public-private exchanges and cooperation involved in the installation and development of CCTV surveillance at Geneva International Airport. Emphasis is placed on the interacting forms of authority and... more
The paper investigates the multiple public-private exchanges and cooperation involved in the installation and development of CCTV surveillance at Geneva International Airport. Emphasis is placed on the interacting forms of authority and expertise of five parties: the user(s), owner and supplier of the camera system, as well as the technical managers of the airport and the Swiss regulatory bodies in airport security. While placing the issues of airport surveillance in the particular context of a specific range of projects and transformations relating to the developments of CCTV at Geneva Airport, the paper not only provides important insights into the micro-politics of surveillance at Geneva Airport, but aims to re-institute these as part of a broader ‘problematic’: the mediating role of expertise and the growing functional fragmentation of authority in contemporary security governance. On this basis, the paper also exemplifies the growing mutual interdependences between security and business interests in the ever growing ‘surveillant assemblage’ in contemporary security governance.
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As sports mega-events (SMEs) attract growing worldwide attention, the security aspect of these events has assumed greater global importance, especially in the post-9/11 anti-terrorism context. The 2008 Beijing Organizing Committee for the... more
As sports mega-events (SMEs) attract growing worldwide attention, the security aspect of these events has assumed greater global importance, especially in the post-9/11 anti-terrorism context. The 2008 Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad set security concern as a top priority. This paper analyses the empirical data derived from fieldwork in Beijing in early 2008 as well as information gathered from official documents and media articles. It presents the types of forces and agencies which shaped the Olympic security plan and explains how the Chinese government integrated its preventive, engaging and repressive strategies. The paper advances a number of preliminary arguments in connection with four main developments at work within the current dynamics of security governance at SMEs: the globalization, technologization, commercialization and standardization of SMEs' securitization.
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The paper investigates the multiple public-private exchanges and cooperation involved in the installation and development of CCTV surveillance at Geneva International Airport. Emphasis is placed on the interacting forms of authority and... more
The paper investigates the multiple public-private exchanges and cooperation involved in the installation and development of CCTV surveillance at Geneva International Airport. Emphasis is placed on the interacting forms of authority and expertise of five parties: the user(s), owner and supplier of the camera system, as well as the technical managers of the airport and the Swiss regulatory bodies in airport security. While placing the issues of airport surveillance in the particular context of a specific range of projects and transformations relating to the developments of CCTV at Geneva Airport, the paper not only provides important insights into the micro-politics of surveillance at Geneva Airport, but aims to re-institute these as part of a broader ‘problematic’: the mediating role of expertise and the growing functional fragmentation of authority in contemporary security governance. On this basis, the paper also exemplifies the growing mutual interdependences between security and business interests in the ever growing ‘surveillant assemblage’ in contemporary security governance.
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Résumé Dans la foulée des événements du 11 septembre 2001, la problématique des incivilités permet de légitimer des politiques sécuritaires souvent musclées. Comment cette situation influence-t-elle les relations entre l’État et le... more
Résumé
Dans la foulée des événements du 11 septembre 2001, la problématique des incivilités permet de légitimer des politiques sécuritaires souvent musclées. Comment cette situation influence-t-elle les relations entre l’État et le citoyen ? Réduit-elle les compétences citoyennes en matière de «civilité»? À partir d’études de cas portant sur l’introduction de la vidéosurveillance dans l’espace public, nous suggérons que la prudence est requise pour répondre à ces interrogations. Aux Transports publics genevois, par exemple, l’installation de caméras dans les véhicules va de pair avec une redéfinition de la politique de sécurité de l’entreprise. Plusieurs mesures viennent alors compléter la vidéosurveillance. Nous assistons simultanément à l’émergence de phénomènes qui perturbent l’autorégulation des comportements citoyens dans l’espace public et de manoeuvres qui réintroduisent du lien social. Ce point de vue permet alors de conclure en rappelant que la vidéosurveillance est davantage un moyen pour discipliner le territoire que les gens.
Abstract
Citizens and “civility.” The example of video surveillance cameras
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001 concern about uncivil behaviour legitimates toughened security. Based on cases studies of the introduction of video surveillance cameras in public spaces, we ask how this will affect relations between the state and citizens and levels of civility. Prudence is in order. Installation of cameras in the vehicles of Geneva’s public transportation system, for example, was part of the company’s reworked security policy. We now see at one and the same time phenomena that destabilise self-regulation of citizens’ behaviour in public places and efforts to reintroduce social cohesion. Our approach allows us to conclude with a reminder that video surveillance is more a technique for disciplining territory than people.
Dans la foulée des événements du 11 septembre 2001, la problématique des incivilités permet de légitimer des politiques sécuritaires souvent musclées. Comment cette situation influence-t-elle les relations entre l’État et le citoyen ? Réduit-elle les compétences citoyennes en matière de «civilité»? À partir d’études de cas portant sur l’introduction de la vidéosurveillance dans l’espace public, nous suggérons que la prudence est requise pour répondre à ces interrogations. Aux Transports publics genevois, par exemple, l’installation de caméras dans les véhicules va de pair avec une redéfinition de la politique de sécurité de l’entreprise. Plusieurs mesures viennent alors compléter la vidéosurveillance. Nous assistons simultanément à l’émergence de phénomènes qui perturbent l’autorégulation des comportements citoyens dans l’espace public et de manoeuvres qui réintroduisent du lien social. Ce point de vue permet alors de conclure en rappelant que la vidéosurveillance est davantage un moyen pour discipliner le territoire que les gens.
Abstract
Citizens and “civility.” The example of video surveillance cameras
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001 concern about uncivil behaviour legitimates toughened security. Based on cases studies of the introduction of video surveillance cameras in public spaces, we ask how this will affect relations between the state and citizens and levels of civility. Prudence is in order. Installation of cameras in the vehicles of Geneva’s public transportation system, for example, was part of the company’s reworked security policy. We now see at one and the same time phenomena that destabilise self-regulation of citizens’ behaviour in public places and efforts to reintroduce social cohesion. Our approach allows us to conclude with a reminder that video surveillance is more a technique for disciplining territory than people.
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Statement The Editors do not necessarily agree with the statements contained in the book reviews, and neither they nor the RGS-IBG assume responsibility for the reviewers’ assessments of the books that they evaluate.
Research Interests: Human Geography and Area
One of the key areas that surveillance studies has been conspicuously little involved in, with only a few exceptions (Donaldson and Wood, 2004; Donaldson 2012; Ottinger 2010; Haggerty and Trottier 2015; Archer 2021), has been the... more
One of the key areas that surveillance studies has been conspicuously little involved in, with only a few exceptions (Donaldson and Wood, 2004; Donaldson 2012; Ottinger 2010; Haggerty and Trottier 2015; Archer 2021), has been the environment and nature. As it becomes increasingly obvious that the effects of the climate crisis are already with us, and with biodiversity loss accelerating, and the environmental justice issues associated with these crises and the potential responses to them worryingly unaddressed, it seems clear that surveillance studies should have more to say. In this free-form, wide-ranging discussion, Simone Browne, Francisco Klauser, and David Murakami Wood, three leading surveillance studies scholars who’ve all been involved in the field and the journal for most, if not all, of its history, discuss the different ways in which their research is dealing with questions of environment, nature, and sustainability and how surveillance studies more broadly could engage. ...
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Building Power, by Anna Vemer Andrzejewski, has the potential to become a critical benchmark for scholars in surveillance studies, offering a compelling range of micro-scale studies into the multiple and complex relationships between... more
Building Power, by Anna Vemer Andrzejewski, has the potential to become a critical benchmark for scholars in surveillance studies, offering a compelling range of micro-scale studies into the multiple and complex relationships between surveillance and space. More specifically, the book explores the manifold and highly elaborate ways in which, in the Victorian period, surveillance informed and codified the design and spatial arrangement of various building-types in the United States: prisons, post offices, factories, private houses and religious camp grounds. Anchored in the field of architectural history, yet refreshingly unconstrained by the discipline's heavy traditions, Andrzejewski's investigation is structured into four main parts, relating to four key objectives of surveillance: discipline, efficiency, hierarchy and fellowship. The book illuminates one by one each of these dimensions of surveillance, by discussing its mediating role on architecture and spatial design. I...
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This article explores in empirical detail the air-bound expectations, imaginations and practices arising from the acquisition of a new police drone in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel. The study shows how drones are transforming the ways in... more
This article explores in empirical detail the air-bound expectations, imaginations and practices arising from the acquisition of a new police drone in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel. The study shows how drones are transforming the ways in which the aerial realm is lived as a context, object and perspective of policing. This tripartite structure is taken as a prism through which to advance novel understandings of the simultaneously elemental and affective, sensory, cognitive and practical dimensions of the aerial volumes within, on and through which drones act. The study of the ways in which these differing dimensions are bound together in how the police think about drones and what they do with them enables the development of an ‘aerial geopolitics of security’ that, from a security viewpoint, approaches interactions between power and space in a three-dimensional and cross-ontological way.
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Farming today relies on ever-increasing forms of data gathering, transfer, and analysis. Think of autonomous tractors and weeding robots, chip-implanted animals and underground infrastructures with inbuilt sensors, and drones or... more
Farming today relies on ever-increasing forms of data gathering, transfer, and analysis. Think of autonomous tractors and weeding robots, chip-implanted animals and underground infrastructures with inbuilt sensors, and drones or satellites offering image analysis from the air. Despite this evolution, however, the social sciences have almost completely overlooked the resulting problematics of power and control. This piece offers an initial review of the main surveillance issues surrounding the problematic of smart farming, with a view to outlining a broader research agenda into the making, functioning, and acting of Big Data in the agricultural sector. For surveillance studies, the objective is also to move beyond the predominant focus on urban space that characterises critical contemporary engagements with Big Data. Smart technologies shape the rural just as much as the urban, and “smart farms” are just as fashionable as “smart cities.”
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In recent years, the rapidly developing field of ‘surveillance studies’ has sparked a remarkable and revealing body of research, which has led to repeated claims to recognise ‘surveillance studies’ as a cross-disciplinary field of... more
In recent years, the rapidly developing field of ‘surveillance studies’ has sparked a remarkable and revealing body of research, which has led to repeated claims to recognise ‘surveillance studies’ as a cross-disciplinary field of research in its own right. However, the almost exclusive reliance of these independency claims upon Anglophone references raises a series of important questions: Must we conclude that other linguistic traditions in surveillance studies do not exist at all, or are we to assume that such studies are heading in a broadly similar direction as their English counterpart?In order to address these questions, the paper suggests engaging with ‘lost’ CCTV studies published in French academia. It succinctly discusses three specificities of the French CCTV context – the legal regulation of CCTV through the 1995 ‘Loi Pasqua’, the specialised economic journal ‘En toute sécurité’ and the quasi absence of publicly mandated statistical evaluations of open street CCTV system...
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Recent debates on surveillance have emphasised the now myriad possibilities of automated, software-based data gathering, management and analysis. One of the many terms used to describe this phenomenon is ‘Big Data’. The field of Big Data... more
Recent debates on surveillance have emphasised the now myriad possibilities of automated, software-based data gathering, management and analysis. One of the many terms used to describe this phenomenon is ‘Big Data’. The field of Big Data covers a large and complex range of practices and technologies from smart borders to CCTV video analysis, and from consumer profiling to self-tracking applications. The paper’s aim is to explore the surveillance dynamics inherent in contemporary Big Data trends. To this end, the paper adopts two main perspectives concerned with two complementary expressions of Big Data: (1) the individual use of various techniques of self-surveillance and tracking and (2) the simultaneous trend to optimise urban infrastructures through smart information technologies. Drawing upon exploratory research conducted by the authors, the paper shows that both expressions of Big Data present a range of common surveillance dynamics on at least four levels: agency, temporality...
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Die Analyse der räumlichen Verteilung der Videoü- berwachung mit Blick aufden öffentlichen Raum in der Stadt Gen zeigt verschiedene Finalitäten und Strategien der Überwachung auf. Darauf aufbauend, werden die Konsequenzen der vorwiegend... more
Die Analyse der räumlichen Verteilung der Videoü- berwachung mit Blick aufden öffentlichen Raum in der Stadt Gen zeigt verschiedene Finalitäten und Strategien der Überwachung auf. Darauf aufbauend, werden die Konsequenzen der vorwiegend privat getragenen Videoüberwachung in bezug auf die Territorialität der Benutzer des öffentlichen Raumes untersucht. Die hauptsächliche Verwendung der Videoüberwachung durch grosskapitalistische private Institutionen verstärkt Tendenzen der Privatisierung, Disziplinierung und Fragmentierung des überwachten Territoriums.
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... Jennings, Will and Martin Lodge. 2009. Tools of Security Risk Management for the London 2012Olympic Games and FIFA 2006 World Cup in Germany. Discussion Paper No: 55, London School of Economics and Political Science, Centre for... more
... Jennings, Will and Martin Lodge. 2009. Tools of Security Risk Management for the London 2012Olympic Games and FIFA 2006 World Cup in Germany. Discussion Paper No: 55, London School of Economics and Political Science, Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation. ...
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... Similarly expressed by Kevin Haggerty and Richard Ericson's conceptualisation of the 'surveillant assemblage' (Haggerty and Ericson 2000), “tele-surveillance brings together a whole series of heterogeneous technical... more
... Similarly expressed by Kevin Haggerty and Richard Ericson's conceptualisation of the 'surveillant assemblage' (Haggerty and Ericson 2000), “tele-surveillance brings together a whole series of heterogeneous technical systems, in which ... Trans: Fredy Perlman and John Supak. ...
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The paper starts with an assessment of the internal spatial organisation of the eight host cities of the European Football Championships 2008 into a complex patchwork of tightly enclosed and monitored fan zones (also called ‘public... more
The paper starts with an assessment of the internal spatial organisation of the eight host cities of the European Football Championships 2008 into a complex patchwork of tightly enclosed and monitored fan zones (also called ‘public viewing events’). Fan zones, such is the paper’s basic assumption, constitute a previously tested and exemplified solution to the problem of how to deal with security and branding in the event city. The paper examines the mediating mechanisms through which the ‘fan zones exemplar’ was transferred from the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany to Euro 2008 in Austria/Switzerland. Based on rich empirical insights, the exemplar is studied in its various forms and stages: as a written bid requirement for Euro 2008, as a lesson drawn from exchanges and collaboration at earlier mega events and as the object of a wide range of conferences, exercises and external assessments. On this basis, the paper also brings to the fore a number of more fundamental insights into the...
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This introductory paper establishes the grounds for a more sustained discussion of Claude Raffestin's understanding of human territoriality in its contribution to contemporary geographical debates. The purpose is to highlight the... more
This introductory paper establishes the grounds for a more sustained discussion of Claude Raffestin's understanding of human territoriality in its contribution to contemporary geographical debates. The purpose is to highlight the broad, and fundamentally interrelated, philosophical, epistemological, and political ambitions of Raffestin's work, before elucidating some of the key conceptual pillars of his relational thinking through territoriality. In this, particular emphasis will be placed on the concept of mediation. The proposed engagement with Raffestin's work offers an opportunity not only for revisiting territoriality in its value for contemporary political geography and sociospatial theory, and for rethinking the positioning and contribution of Raffestin's oeuvre itself, but also for critically reflecting upon the spaces and power relationships of geographical knowledge production today and in the past.
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Note: Rapport de recherche dans le cadre de l’Action Cost A14 Reference ESPRI-REPORT-2003-001 Record created on 2008-05-15, modified on 2016-08-08
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This paper argues that at its very core, the policy response to a pandemic such as COVID-19 is shaped by the search for the right balance between openness and closure, mobility and public safety. More specifically, drawing upon relevant... more
This paper argues that at its very core, the policy response to a pandemic such as COVID-19 is shaped by the search for the right balance between openness and closure, mobility and public safety. More specifically, drawing upon relevant social-scientific literatures and examples relating to the fight against COVID-19 in Switzerland, the paper highlights three broad and fundamentally intertwined spatial logics of control and restriction through which differing degrees and modalities of closure and openness are being articulated in the context of infectious disease. These refer to (1) border and access control;(2) the monitoring of people and objects on the move and (3) to the internal organization and monitoring of specific spatial enclaves. The three spatial logics of crisis management and control offer an exploratory framework, the paper argues, to study the functioning and implications of outbreak response both during and after the pandemic.
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Militaires ou policiers, les drones d’utilite publique ne cessent de faire parler d’eux a l’echelle internationale. En Suisse, ce phenomene a debute dans les annees 90 et s’est accelere dans les annees 2000, marque par un grand interet... more
Militaires ou policiers, les drones d’utilite publique ne cessent de faire parler d’eux a l’echelle internationale. En Suisse, ce phenomene a debute dans les annees 90 et s’est accelere dans les annees 2000, marque par un grand interet des [...]