Locating Televisual and Non‐Televisual Textual Sequences with Institutional Ethnography: A Study of Campus and Apartment CCTV Security Work

Abstract

There is a longstanding social scientific practice of focusing on verbal and written accounts as forms of data to the neglect of televisual materials. In this paper I address the above problematic by examining the productive power of video as a means of organizing social and work relations. Treating video as a form of text which is activated by human subjects and therefore an active constituent of organization in both local and extra‐local settings, I draw on interview and observation data collected from research conducted with closed‐circuit television (CCTV) surveillance camera operators engaged in various forms of security work. This research is an extension and utilization of institutional ethnography: a method of inquiry which problematizes social relations at the local site of lived experience, while examining how textual sequences coordinate consciousness, actions, and ruling relations. Taking up visual culture and the question of surveillance in institutional ethnography is a novel approach, and is ultimately important for de‐routinizing the organizational role camera surveillance plays in everyday life.