“Surveillance culture,” according to an influential body of scholarly work, is characterized by the habitual use of surveillance technologies that connect people and machines in webs or assemblages. The origin of this culture is pinned to the political and economic interests of private tech and the security state. This understanding of surveillance culture, however, leaves unanswered important questions about social relations, collective norms, and the broader interpretive space in which surveillance practices are located. To address them, I use civil sphere theory to explain the popularization and dissemination of mass surveillance techniques in the early-twentieth century United States. I draw on two specific popularization efforts: identity deceptions unmasked by the Chicago Police Department’s fingerprint experts; and private sector surveillance entrepreneurs, self-styled as “Fingerprint Men.” Linking these domains were surveillance narratives, stories about intimate crime that threatened the civil sphere. Surveillance narratives were effective not because they were factually accurate (they often weren’t) but because they offered riveting accounts of urban life that drew on cultural scripts concerning race, risk, and morality. Historical and cultural analyses of these narratives shed new light on surveillance culture as a space of semantic relationships among discourse and symbols.

根据一个有影响力的学术著作，“监视文化”的特点是习惯性地使用监视技术，将网络或集合中的人和机器连接起来。这种文化的起源与私营技术和安全国家的政治和经济利益息息相关。然而，对监视文化的这种理解留下了关于社会关系、集体规范以及监视实践所在的更广泛解释空间的重要问题未得到解答。为了解决这些问题，我使用公民领域理论来解释大规模监视技术在 20 世纪初美国的普及和传播。我借鉴了两项具体的普及​​工作：芝加哥警察局指纹专家揭露的身份欺骗；和私营部门的监视企业家，自称为“指纹人”。将这些领域联系起来的是监视叙述，关于威胁民事领域的亲密犯罪的故事。监视叙述之所以有效，不是因为它们在事实上是准确的（它们通常不是），而是因为它们提供了引人入胜的城市生活描述，这些描述利用了有关种族、风险和道德的文化脚本。对这些叙述的历史和文化分析为监视文化作为话语和符号之间的语义关系空间提供了新的视角。监视叙述之所以有效，不是因为它们在事实上是准确的（它们通常不是），而是因为它们提供了引人入胜的城市生活描述，这些描述利用了有关种族、风险和道德的文化脚本。对这些叙述的历史和文化分析为监视文化作为话语和符号之间的语义关系空间提供了新的视角。监视叙述之所以有效，不是因为它们在事实上是准确的（它们通常不是），而是因为它们提供了引人入胜的城市生活描述，这些描述利用了有关种族、风险和道德的文化脚本。对这些叙述的历史和文化分析为监视文化作为话语和符号之间的语义关系空间提供了新的视角。