Sociological Reflections on Security Through Surveillance

This article initiates a Sociology of Security. Such a field should analyze how conditions transpire for security—however defined—to surface as a value in individual and collective living, how this value comes to be articulated, and how different kinds of individual and collective experiences shape its meaning. In addition, a Sociology of Security should pay attention to how the kinds of individual and collective responses to particular understandings of security, institutions and policies put in place to this end (or lack thereof), and consequences of such practices are shaping the nature of our social world and the aesthetics of our physical environment. Specific focus is on the relationship between security and surveillance.