ABSTRACT
This chapter questions whether modern techniques for visualising distant events and objects should necessarily be conceptualised in terms of a notion of surveillance. It considers the visual in terms of what have been calling a 'cultural outlook' informed by what Jay originally referred as a 'scopic regime'. The chapter deals with the assistance of ideas derived from social and cultural theory and art history, and establishes that there is a singular and determining 'way of seeing' within modern Western culture. Social and cultural theory, like all forms of understanding, or 'ways of seeing', generates a partial view of the world. This returns to the issue of 'reflexivity'. It is possible to forge a conscious recognition of the constructive relation between one's visual practices and visual culture. Transformation is not a gathering of the world through vision, it is a re-ordering of the world within a vision.
