Leisure and Surveillance
Surveillance has become a defining, if not explicit, feature of leisure in daily life. For some, the ways that surveillance is embedded in leisure goes unnoticed, as part of the “liquid surveillance” that is both fluid and seemingly everywhere; it takes special effort to call attention to it. From the ubiquity of CCTV, Internet cookies, and the collection of personal data, to the hi-tech assistive technologies used in the home that track personal habits and patterns of use, surveillance is increasingly part of the fabric of people’s leisure lives. Nearly any engagement with a common smartphone not only monitors and surveils the content of the device’s use, but also monitors the user geospatially. The observation, collection and selling for profit of users’ data has become known as “surveillance capitalism” (Zuboff, 2019). Surveillance, then, is not only something imposed from above and beyond, by often obscured and unclear powerful entities, it is also something in which we engage, both passively and unconsciously, but also actively and acutely aware. For some, especially racialized, minoritized, and marginalized groups, rather than operating invisibly, State surveillance of leisure in local neighborhoods, parks, playing fields, shopping malls, and urban centres presents a visceral form of disciplinary technologies to monitor and control people’s bodies and movements. Yet, in other ways, unjust abuses of power, from law enforcement to celebrities, can be recorded and used to hold these abuses to account. For many, such forms of surveillance, sometimes found in leisure spaces (e.g., public parks), are vital to seeking justice. This Article Collection shares papers that explore leisure as a crucial node in the ascendance of surveillance capitalism, and related, how experiences of leisure are changing as a result.