Surveillance and Body Flows: A Study on Taipei Rapid Transit Space

• Main Authors: Jen-an Chen, 陳真安
• Other Authors: none
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/19610096240400067949

碩士 === 東吳大學 === 社會學系 === 93 === The Taipei Rapid Transit is not only an expensive infrastructure for solving the urban transportation crisis, but also a spatial-representational complex carrying and presenting new urban experiences which shape a brand-new urban life. The thesis demonstrates the interrelationship between Taipei Rapid Transit space and passenger. The author quotes the power in modern city is ubiquitous from the concept of Panopticism by Michel Foucault and revises Henri Lefebvre’s framework of spatial analysis, combining theories of Michel De Certeau’s everyday life theory, thereby proposes a scenario showing the surveillance vs. passengers body flows within Taipei Rapid Transit space of various textures of modernity, space formations and power relations. Through field observation, interviews and GIS operation, this thesis analyzes the interconnections between the Taipei Rapid Transit space and the passengers’ body flows and probes into passengers’ perception at different circumstances within the trans-space. A total of seventeen people are interviewed in this study, including the Taipei Rapid Transit station officers and the passengers. The thesis concludes that powers and authorities are embedded in the Taipei Rapid Transit space through strict electronic surveillances and disciplines. They make passengers behave well as if the components in the production line and form an abstract trans-space. The passengers obviously sense the tempo generated by the high-tech rapid transit atmosphere, and then become more rational and more obedient. However, in the electronic-monitoring abstract space, the surveillance system does not control everything. In fact, sometimes there are resists and body flows displaying an out-of-order orbit. Along this uncontrolled orbit, the Taipei Rapid Transit social space is formed in contrast to the Taipei Rapid Transit abstract space. Just because the out-of-order situation repeats again and again, it manifests the essence of disciplines and rules still existing.