The Phenomenology of Passing Inspection in Neutralizing Surveillant Spaces: The Case of High-status Substance Users

• In Event: The Context of Higher Education: Punishment, LGBTQ and Women Officers, and Minimally-Surveilled Communities

Abstract

This paper examines how high status students enrolled in professional and graduate school programs experience the process of passing inspection while possessing or being under the influence of controlled substances. In contrast to portrayals described in the literature--where inspection is considered more in reference to common targets of hyper-surveillance, e.g., minority youth--the present effort addresses the phenomenology of going through or skirting inspection processes as described by substance-using persons associated with privileged social spaces. These users traverse or inhabit realms that lack the surveillant infrastructures characteristic of less affluent social spaces, or encounter practices of surveillance that are differentially organized. The present analysis is supplemented by examples drawn from additional ethnographic studies of elite and insulated groups who are involved with deviance.

Authors

• Peter R. Ibarra, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Oren M. Gur, Pennsylvania State University, Abington College