The Visuality of Professionalised Sousveillance

Abstract

This contribution addresses the visuality deployed in the practice of professionalised sousveillance. I draw on research undertaken with sousveillance activists in Brazilian favelas. By recognising vision as a site of power and identifying the particular visuality central to the policing of favelas, I draw an uncomfortable link between professionalised sousveillance and this police visuality. In acknowledging this relationship, it can be argued that professionalised sousveillance practice unintentionally works to preserve the perceptual foundations of the favela’s social order. I conclude that we should also seek forms of sousveillance practice that engage alternative visualities.