Caring Surveillance: Ambiguities of fieldwork in a criminal landscape in Eastern Romania
Assistant Professor Trine Mygind Korsby has published an article in The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, entitled ‘Caring Surveillance: ambiguities of fieldwork in a criminal landscape in Eastern Romania’.
Drawing from fieldwork conducted among people engaged in criminal activity in Romania, the article explores two distinct forms of surveillance. Firstly, it sheds light on the strategies employed by Korsby’s informants to thwart surveillance, while ostensibly being under scrutiny by law enforcement. Secondly, it examines how, during fieldwork, she, as the anthropologist, became the subject of surveillance – not by law enforcement or the authorities, but by her informants. In the article, Korsby explores ethnographer positionality through an analysis of the relational dynamics and social practices that emerged from this surveillance, contending that surveillance manifests as a form of social interaction, encompassing dualities of vigilance and uneasiness on one hand, and familiarity and safety on the other.
To capture this ambiguity in a fieldwork context, Korsby suggests the concept of ‘caring surveillance’, and she argues that surveillance can simultaneously exert control and dominate, while also providing reassurance and comfort to its subjects.