摘要：Social monitoring is often explained in terms of top-down or hierarchal forms of power, which is reflected in the reliance on neo-Marxist and disciplinary society analytical frameworks in contemporary studies of open-street closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance. Established surveillance theories cannot account for instances when citizens themselves seek out regulatory measures in their own communities. Community schemes can precede and inform police policy. Drawing from developments in the sociology of governance, I examine media coverage, government document and questionnaire data regarding the rise of open-street CCTV schemes in Canadian cities, demonstrating empirically how regulation through CCTV surveillance can be generated from above (e.g. police, state), the middle (e.g. business entrepreneurs), and below (e.g. moral entrepreneurs and civic governance). Offering four suppositions that act as a pragmatic framework for understanding the rise of open-street CCTV in Canada, this article is a partial corrective to the reigning theoretical explanations regarding how regulatory projects like open-street CCTV are generated.
