Contrary to many major sporting leagues such as the NHL, NFL, NBA, and MLB, or the Olympic Games as a whole, the professional tennis industry has not been individually scrutinized in terms of governance, social control, and surveillance practices. This thesis presents an in-depth account of the major governing bodies of the professional tennis circuit with the aim of examining how they govern, control, constrain, and practice surveillance on tennis athletes and their bodies. Foucault’s major theoretical concepts of disciplinary power, governmentality, and bio-power are found relevant today and can be enhanced by Rose’s ethico-politics model and Haggerty and Ericson’s surveillant assemblage. However, it is also shown how Foucault, Rose, and Haggerty and Ericson’s different accounts of “modes of governing” perpetuate sociological predicaments of professional tennis players within late capitalism. These modes of surveillance are founded on a meritocracy based on the ATP and WTA rankings systems. A player’s ranking affects how he or she is governed, surveilled, controlled, and even punished. Despite ostensibly promoting tennis athletes’ health protection and wellbeing, the systems of surveillance, governance, and control rely on a biased and capitalistically-driven meritocracy that actually jeopardizes athletes’ health and contributes to social class divisions, socio-economic inequalities, gender discrimination, and media pressure. Through the use of top-players’ accounts, it is also shown how some players resist certain governing, controlling, and surveillance practices designed for their benefit, while others understand and accept the resultant constraints as part of their choice to be a professional tennis player. / Thesis (Master, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2013-11-12 09:25:44.284

Dans le cadre de ce travail, nous nous intéressons à la surveillance, que nous définissons, suivant les travaux de G.T. Marx, comme étant « l’examen d’individus, de groupes et de contextes grâce à l’usage de moyens techniques pour extraire ou créer de l’information » (Marx, 2015, p. 375, traduit dans Castagnino, 2018, p. 23). La surveillance contemporaine fait l’objet d’une attention particulière en ce qu’une « expansion capitale et une intensification de la surveillance dans presque toutes les sphères institutionnelles de notre existence » (Ball et al., 2012, p. 1, traduit dans Castagnino, pp. 18-19) caractériseraient notre époque. Face à cela, le courant des surveillance studies a vu le jour, afin de dévoiler ces pratiques de surveillance qui, selon eux, sont de nature à favoriser les discriminations, les exclusions, et bien d’autres injustices (Castagnino, 2018). Ce courant s’est longtemps basé sur les analyses de M. Foucault, et particulièrement sur la métaphore panoptique. K.D. Haggerty et R.V. Ericson (2000), cependant, avancent que la métaphore panoptique est insuffisante pour rendre compte de la surveillance contemporaine. Ils ont ainsi développé la théorie du surveillant assemblage pour mieux rendre compte, selon eux, de cette surveillance contemporaine. Les auteurs ne proposent cependant aucune empirie dans leur article pour rendre compte de leurs résultats. Pour cette raison, et afin de vérifier l’actualité du surveillant assemblage (celui-ci ayant été théorisé en 2000), ce travail consiste en une étude empirique visant l’exploration de l’actualisation du surveillant assemblage dans la culture que constituent les films de science-fiction postérieurs à l’an 2000 portant sur la surveillance. Nous procéderons de la même manière pour la métaphore panoptique, afin de donner des éléments de réponse quant à la controverse qui existe autour de la pertinence d’avancer cette métaphore pour rendre compte de la surveillance contemporaine.

In this examination of citizen surveillance, I engage with Foucaultian and Deleuzian conceptualizations of surveillance, power, resistance, control, and desire, to explore the motivation(s) of community members who film and disseminate footage of the police. Methodologically, I conducted semi-structured interviews with community stakeholders to study the latent thematic ideas embedded in their responses. These themes represent the underlying motivational factors a citizen surveiller may have when filming the police. In my analysis of these themes, I explore: citizen surveillers’ logic for resisting power; citizen surveillers’ understandings of power; and, citizen surveillers’ reported approaches to both passive and active forms of resistance. Subsequently, there appears to be an underlying desire for power and a resistance to power when filming the police. However, given the exploratory nature of this study, there is a need to continue investigating the theoretical and under substantiated claims about citizen surveillance and its association with race, gender and socio-economic status.

The contemporary flâneur is confronted with a radically different world in comparison to the Parisian arcades of the nineteenth century during which the idea of the flâneur was conceptualised. The current urban milieu of the flâneur is dominated by consumerism, computer systems and surveillance, and the research posed here explores the flâneur within this environment. The flâneur was originally visualised on the streets and arcades of the city; however, cities do not only exist as buildings and streets and have become global entities that are constituted from the physical and the virtual. Throughout this study reference is primarily made to the work of Francis Alÿs to elucidate theoretical concepts. This study proposes that there is an absence of the teleological goal in the journey of the flâneur and as such, the flâneur wanders the streets without aim; however, in the process creates narratives and leaves traces of his journey. The ubiquity of surveillance in the contemporary metropolis complicates the flâneur's relationship with the latter. Consequently the impact of surveillance on the flâneur and the flâneur's daily wanderings are examined to ascertain its influence on the flâneur in a hyperreal society. In contemporary thinking, the traditional idea of the male flâneur requires reassessment and this research investigates the possibility of the female flâneur and women's presence in the public spaces of the city and the virtual realm of cyberspace. Furthermore, women are intricately linked to consumerism and their experience and position in the city are influenced by being seen as objects of the gaze. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Visual Arts / unrestricted