“Biopolitics from below?” — Lessons of Emergent Urban Governance Trend Under Covid-19 in China
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shao-blanshao-mcp-dusp-2021-thesis.pdf
Description
Thesis PDF
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8.55 MB
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Adobe PDF
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Author(s)
Shao, Yu
Advisor(s)
Rajagopal, Balakrishnan
Date Issued
February 2021
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This thesis interrogates COVID-19 emergent urban governance trends in China in response to the COVID-19 crisis, with a particular focus on the use of the narratives of epidemic and state emergency, as well as the governance strategies during the pandemic and in the socalled post-COVID era. More importantly, this thesis intends to investigate people’s responses towards emergency policies—the compliances and creative strategies that people have adopted to demonstrate their resistance. Using a combination of ethnographic data and archival research, this thesis covers five major themes: a) the impacts that different outbreak narratives perpetuated on the Internet; b) left-wing scholars’ view (or hope) for the rise of socialism and how the Chinese state has used the socialist narrative to build up its international image; c) the strong comeback of capitalist practices the pandemic exacerbated the precariousness of work; d) how the pandemic has been used as a justification to impose panoptic surveillance and control on Chinese citizens and asked for absolute obedience towards government policies, as well as how the formulaic practices dominated the post-COVID landscape; and finally, e) people’s response and sentiments to government policies such as lockdowns and social distancing displayed on social media platforms. It concludes by arguing that even in an autocratic state with increasingly tightened control justified by the epidemic, people are not passive recipients of such policies. They have come up with creative strategies to express their resistance and exhibit negotiation with the policies. It further argues that in China, COVID-19 has aroused a new wave of active civil participation, for citizens to discuss politics openly, starting from pandemic related topics to the freedom of speech at large. Complicating what Panagiotis Sotiris terms biopolitics from below, it suggests that the creative posts on social media platforms are a savvy means of claiming back our bodies.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning
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