The smart camp as classroom

Control, education, and agency in Muslim internment in Northwest China

Bibliographic Data

ID7990796
AuthorsD Byler (0000-0003-0332-1742, Simon Fraser University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume66
Issue3
Pages420-439
Publication date2024-09-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Comparative Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-7152 • E-ISSN: 1568-5187
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/00207152241279297
OpenAlexW4402814447
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited17

This article considers how technology and the Chinese models of camp governance affect camp detainee agency in contemporary Xinjiang, China. It shows how the models of camp governance used to control Uyghurs and other Muslim peoples emerge from the history of the Maoist education system in China. It also considers how this education model of governance is met by a new control model of automated surveillance. Drawing on repeated and ongoing interviews with former detainees as well as police documents, this article examines how detainees themselves are ranked in the order of the cell, and the digital, aural, and textual content of camp instruction. Ultimately, the article argues that a camp governance model of coercive education does offer detainees some partial forms of autonomy. Paradoxically, in part because of the contradiction between the two governance models, human agency is not fully lost in the midst of intense forms of detainee trauma

Agency (philosophy · China · Control (management · Economics · Management · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Law

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