In this opinion piece, we challenge the dominating view that surveillance in smart cities is driven by surveillance capitalism alone. Whilst this literature unpicks important factors and trends, we argue that a focus on surveillance capitalism as a sole driver risks ignoring the more intricate realities of surveillance assemblages. They are often propelled by many different desires and power relations (Haggerty and Ericson 2000). We argue for a more nuanced analysis of the drivers instead, taking into account practices in other countries beyond the United States and the United Kingdom. We argue that much of the existent research skews the picture due to inherent bias, and seldom observed drivers are revealed when smart city developments in different countries such as Belgium and Brazil are considered. We suggest that what we call “surveillance theatre,” the performative uses of surveillance that characterize security discourses, is an overlooked yet important driver of smart city development. Such a driver is particularly evident when it comes to security discourses.

中文翻译：

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智能城市作为监控剧场

在这篇评论文章中，我们挑战了智能城市中的监控仅由监控资本主义驱动的主流观点。虽然这些文献揭示了重要的因素和趋势，但我们认为，将监控资本主义作为唯一驱动因素可能会忽视更复杂的监控组合现实。他们经常受到许多不同的欲望和权力关系的推动（Haggerty and Ericson 2000）。我们主张对驱动因素进行更细致的分析，同时考虑美国和英国以外其他国家的做法。我们认为，由于固有的偏见，现有的大部分研究都扭曲了画面，并且在考虑比利时和巴西等不同国家的智慧城市发展时，很少发现观察到的驱动因素。我们建议我们所谓的“监视剧场”，即作为安全话语特征的监视的表演性使用，是智慧城市发展的一个被忽视但重要的驱动力。在涉及安全讨论时，这种驱动力尤其明显。