Provocation: Technology, resistance and surveillance in public space.

The introduction of technologies that monitor and track individuals to attribute suspicion and guilt has become commonplace in practices of order maintenance in public space. A case study of the introduction of a marker spray in Dutch urban public transport is used to conceptualise the role of technology in everyday resistances against surveillance. The introduction of this technology made available alternative subject positions. The notion of provocation is proposed for the opening up of social spaces by a technology. Through provocation, issues that do not find their expression in commonly accepted protocols and means of evidence are given a voice as a result of defiant, emotional and provisional technology usage. Attending to visible and defiant usages also opens up an agenda for examining the varying intensities at which technology operates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]