Networks of Inspection: Reflections on Perception in the Modern City

European “urban modernity” has often been conceptualized in terms of new “ways of seeing” which emerged in the nineteenth century. This new urban visual economy has been most commonly characterized in terms of either spectacle or surveillance, or some amalgamation of the two. In this paper, I critique this characterization by using the example of urban inspection, primarily in Britain but also in Germany. Over the course of the nineteenth century, I argue, distinct regimes of urban inspection emerged across Europe. These regimes involved personnel, institutions and particular strategies and tactics of inspection. I will particularly address the latter, looking at several areas of municipal life which were “opened” to inspection: sanitary arrangements, noxious trades, lodging houses and slaughterhouses. Distinct domains of urban practice were thus exposed to the “eye of power,” but in a fashion that was demonstrably non-panoptic. Inspectors, ideally, practiced their trade with tact and politeness, and clear lines were drawn between inspectable entities and ones which should remain obscure. In particular, I argue, the realm of the inspectable was predominantly nonhuman: in other words, inspectors kept their eyes on things, not people. To emphasise this point, I will discuss the emergent morphology of the city, in which inspectability was engineered into the fabric of the city (via technologies like manholes, inspection chambers and meters), along with calculated obscurity (via private spaces like bathrooms, bedrooms, mortuaries and so on). Inspectability, I conclude, formed a distinct modality of perception which is irreducible to either “surveillance” or “spectacle.” This modality, involving technology, architecture and inspectors, is best captured through the idiom of the network. In conclusion, I will suggest ways in which actor-network theory and other new forms of historical materialism can enrich our understanding of urban history.