The Dictionary of Human Geography

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Since the nineteenth century, these ‘fixed’,

architectural models of panopticism have

been complemented by a widening range of

surveillance machines, many of which now

routinely include diffused, interconnecting,

computerized devices. Human geographers

and others have thus addressed the satur-

ation of contemporary societies with sites of

continuous, machinic surveillance. Early

research emphasized the social implications

of geographic information systems

(Pickles, 1995a) and the proliferation of

Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras

to monitor public spaces (Koskela, 2000).

The significance of these practices is not

confined to the political and commercial:

they also have important military applica-

tions. Late-modernwarplaces a premium on

persistent surveillance from aerial and space-

mounted platforms, including Unmanned

Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or ‘drones’ that

transmit real-time imagery to command and

control centres and ground troops:

these images can feed directly into the iden-

tification and execution of targets through

what Graham (2009b) calls the ‘algorithmic

gaze’.

These practices have spiralled far beyond

their initial spheres of application, and an

important emerging strand of work in surveil-

lance geography analyses howeveryday life

in highly computerized societies is coming to

be constituted through a burgeoning range of

interlinked, digital surveillance systems. This

‘calculative background’, as Thrift (2004b)

terms it, is increasingly automated, inter-

nationalized and organized through the active

agency of computer code. This means that

the geographies of life chances,mobilities,

access rights,bordercrossings and service

privileges are now sorted through largely

invisible systems of digitized surveillance,

working simultaneously across multiple geo-

graphical scales (Graham, 2005). This hap-

pens through sites as diverse as call centres,

supermarket checkouts, TV viewing, digital

CCTV cameras, neighbourhood GIS sys-

tems, mobile phones, webcams, web sites,

computerized automobiles, and national bor-

der or airport security checkpoints. Rather

than emerging as some all-seeing electronic

‘Panopticon’ or some dystopian ‘Big

Brother’ drawn from Orwell’s classic novel

1984 , however, these systems of surveillance

remain fragmented and operate instead as

multiple ‘Little Brothers’. Oligoptic rather

than panoptic, they do not monitor all spaces

and behaviours at all times. Instead, their

geographies overlap, cross-cut and intersect

in complex ways that are currently poorly

understood. sg

Suggested reading

Levin (2002); Lyon (2006). See alsoSurveillance

and Society, an open access journal at http://www.

surveillance-and-society.org.

survey analysis The various procedures

involved in the collection and analysis of data

from individuals, almost invariably using some

sort ofquestionnaire. As such they are a type

ofextensive researchdesign.

A survey involves several stages. The first is

definition of the research problem, including

the formulation ofhypothesesand identifica-

tion of the needed information. The second

includes determining the population to be

studied, which includes deciding what form

of sampling is needed. The next stage

involves deciding how the hypotheses will be

tested (including the analytical techniques to

be employed), and is followed by development

of a questionnaire (which should include pre-

test stages and pilot investigations).

After administration of the questionnaires

the data are prepared for analysis: quantitative

data are readily dealt with; qualitative infor-

mation (such as reported occupations and

responses to open-ended questions) has to be

handled through the development of coding

schemes, increasingly through the use of

sophisticated computer software for textual

analysis. To ensure statistically reliable results,

it is unusual for the number of separate cat-

egorical codes (such as social class) to exceed

ten, and is typically five or under. The data are

then usually entered into a computer database

and checked for consistency and gross errors

(‘cleaning’ the data set) before the analyses

are conducted, although increasingly the

responses are entered directly to a computer

by the interviewer (whether at a face-to-face

interview or in an interview by telephone).

The analysis of surveys consists of four

quantitative elements that need to be under-

taken simultaneously:

. Evaluating the size effects between vari-
ables and by doing so taking account of
other variables – what Rosenberg (1978)
calls the logic of survey methodology;
. Testing as part of confirmatory data analy-
sis whether the observed effects could have
occurred by chance, or whether the lack of
an effect is due to inadequate statistical
power;

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_S Final Proof page 734 1.4.2009 3:23pm

SURVEY ANALYSIS