“I Ain’t Even Gonna Cap to It”: Ethnography-as-Surveillance and Dark Sousveillance in the Classroom

Abstract

This article theorizes classroom ethnography in the socio-historical context of the U.S. as a form of racialized surveillance which is calibrated by anti-Black colonial discourses, racially saturated perception, and one’s vulnerability to interpellation. Focusing on the interaction of “Dominic,” a Black focal student, which was documented through ethnographic fieldwork, I conduct a frame analysis to investigate how ethnographic surveillance, as a racialized technology of power, becomes relevant to the frames Dominic negotiated. The analysis demonstrates that a surveillance frame was consequential to Dominic’s interaction and that Dominic’s verbal behavior was sensitive to the racialized element of surveillance generally and to anti-blackness specifically. The analysis further shows how Dominic engaged in “dark sousveillance” (Browne 2015) as a form of ethnographic refusal, and the ensuing discussion considers aspects of reflexive practice by which ethnographer-surveillers in education may engage in “abolitionist” (Shange 2019) ethnography.