‘Shadowing the state’: Subaltern surveillance and the rhythms of everyday resistance

This paper challenges and unsettles dominant discourses on spatial control by conceptualizing subaltern surveillance as an everyday counter-practice through which street traders negotiate access to contested spaces. While literature is loaded with state-centric perspectives on surveillance – less attention has been paid to how street traders flip the surveillance gaze. How do street traders engage in subaltern surveillance to negotiate access to contested urban spaces, and what do these practices reveal about power relations in cities? Building from ethnographic inquiry in Harare, Zimbabwe, I demonstrate how street traders use sophisticated spatial and temporal knowledge of municipal enforcement rhythms and deploy this locally embedded everyday wisdom to undermine dominant surveillance and spatial control. The paper situates subaltern surveillance within broader discussions on urban informality, everyday resistance, and the right to the city, arguing that street traders’ acts of watching, predicting, and adapting are not merely survival tactics but also political maneuvers that challenge repressive domination. This framing challenges the dominant narratives that construct surveillance as a predominantly top-down practice. By so doing, the study invites new dialogues on governance and lays the groundwork for a critical analysis of the dialectical relationship between subaltern surveillance and dominant urban governance logics.