UMass Law UMass Law: Owens Publishes a New Article in the American Sociological Association’s Socius Journal

Professor Owens recently published a new article in a special issue of Socius that explores how surveillance works in highly surveilled environments.

Professor Owens recently published a new article in the American Sociological Association’s Socius Journal that explores how surveillance works (and doesn’t work!) in highly surveilled environments. The article, Effective Surveillance That “Doesn’t Work”: Inferences and Social Control in New York City Public Housing, draws from qualitative data collected by the author.

The findings in the article address a significant source of endogeneity within existing studies of surveillance and demonstrate how individuals make inferences about the possibilities of surveillant function which may be related to dissolution of social bonds and social avoidance practices.

Heightened electronic surveillance has become a hallmark of already heavily policed communities. The article describes how those under surveillance can make inferences about surveillance even when they perceive, for example, that surveillance cameras are not working or are dysfunctional: “Inferences are made on the basis of evidence, individual and communal experience, and reason and emerges through a complex interaction between agency and environment, place and history.” The article further suggests how to better understand the use of electronic surveillance in contexts of both care and coercion.