ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers in heuristic detail the social relationships and forces that define and matrix a specific supervisory circulation. Supervisory practices thereby presuppose a multiplicity of contingent human actors and non-human actants, often dislocated in time-space. Predominantly belonging to the fields of visual culture and biomedicine, visuality is an affinity term to that of visibility. The camera operators attention is formally directed to the detection of disorderly rhythms: to sensing impending social disruption. The hierarchical or top-down rendition of surveillance operativity as an asymmetrical practice has become a seductive approach for dissecting, demystifying and unsettling contrasting power distributions, specifically those incorporating an observational element. Visualisation of social phenomena is from this perspective connected principally to disciplinary projects, biopolitical interests, contingency coordination and intervention rationalisation.
