Upgrading the Nation: Promise and Peril of Techno-Development in China (Under Contract with Princeton University Press)
Full manuscript under review at Princeton University Press
Upgrading the Nation addresses the question of how and why a capable developmental state’s campaign of human-centered development has, ironically, led to the fetishization of technologies and techniques whose economic benefits are countered by exclusionary and even dehumanizing consequences. I argue that following the 2008 global financial crisis, China’s effort to pursue a more humane model of development has been effected through—and, ultimately, undermined by—a process of scientization that prioritizes technical solutions in an effort to “upgrade” the nation. I call this new mode of development “techno-development” and examine not only its transformation of how labor and capital are valued in China, but also its uninterrogated use as a form of political legitimation. The book features government officials, economic planners, firms, managers, robots, metrics, algorithm, factory workers, platform workers, and engineers. I am interested in the meanings of human lives in a society organized based on a version of techno-development and the state-capital-labor-technology-nation relationships.
The Contentious Public Sphere: Law, Media and Authoritarian Rule in China (Princeton University Press, 2018)
Winner of the 2018 Distinguished Book Award, Sociology of Law Section of the American Sociological Association
Winner of the 2018 Gordon Hirabayashi Human Rights Book Award, Human Rights Section of the American Sociological Association
Winner of the 2014 American Sociological Association Best Dissertation Award
The Contentious Public Sphere in China shows how the Chinese state drew on law, marketized media, and the internet to further an authoritarian project of modernization, but ended up inadvertently creating a nationwide contentious public sphere in China—one the Chinese state must now endeavor to control.
Since the mid-2000s, public opinion and debate in China has become increasingly common and consequential, despite the ongoing censorship of speech and regulation of civil society. How did this happen? In The Contentious Public Sphere in China, Ya-Wen Lei shows how the Chinese state drew on law, the media, and the internet to further an authoritarian project of modernization, but in so doing, inadvertently created a nationwide public sphere in China—one the state must now endeavor to control. Lei examines the influence this unruly sphere has had on Chinese politics and the ways that the state has responded.
Using interviews, newspaper articles, online texts, official documents, and national surveys, Lei shows that the development of the public sphere in China has provided an unprecedented forum for citizens to influence the public agenda, demand accountability from the government, and organize around the concepts of law and rights. She demonstrates how citizens came to understand themselves as legal subjects, legal and media professionals began to collaborate in unexpected ways, and existing conditions of political and economic fragmentation created unintended opportunities for political critique, particularly with the rise of the internet. The emergence of this public sphere—and its uncertain future—is a pressing one with important implications for the political prospects of the Chinese people.
Investigating how individuals learn to use public discourse to influence politics, The Contentious Public Sphere in China offers new possibilities for thinking about the transformation of state-society relations.
Full manuscript under review at Princeton University Press
Upgrading the Nation addresses the question of how and why a capable developmental state’s campaign of human-centered development has, ironically, led to the fetishization of technologies and techniques whose economic benefits are countered by exclusionary and even dehumanizing consequences. I argue that following the 2008 global financial crisis, China’s effort to pursue a more humane model of development has been effected through—and, ultimately, undermined by—a process of scientization that prioritizes technical solutions in an effort to “upgrade” the nation. I call this new mode of development “techno-development” and examine not only its transformation of how labor and capital are valued in China, but also its uninterrogated use as a form of political legitimation. The book features government officials, economic planners, firms, managers, robots, metrics, algorithm, factory workers, platform workers, and engineers. I am interested in the meanings of human lives in a society organized based on a version of techno-development and the state-capital-labor-technology-nation relationships.
The Contentious Public Sphere: Law, Media and Authoritarian Rule in China (Princeton University Press, 2018)
Winner of the 2018 Distinguished Book Award, Sociology of Law Section of the American Sociological Association
Winner of the 2018 Gordon Hirabayashi Human Rights Book Award, Human Rights Section of the American Sociological Association
Winner of the 2014 American Sociological Association Best Dissertation Award
The Contentious Public Sphere in China shows how the Chinese state drew on law, marketized media, and the internet to further an authoritarian project of modernization, but ended up inadvertently creating a nationwide contentious public sphere in China—one the Chinese state must now endeavor to control.
Since the mid-2000s, public opinion and debate in China has become increasingly common and consequential, despite the ongoing censorship of speech and regulation of civil society. How did this happen? In The Contentious Public Sphere in China, Ya-Wen Lei shows how the Chinese state drew on law, the media, and the internet to further an authoritarian project of modernization, but in so doing, inadvertently created a nationwide public sphere in China—one the state must now endeavor to control. Lei examines the influence this unruly sphere has had on Chinese politics and the ways that the state has responded.
Using interviews, newspaper articles, online texts, official documents, and national surveys, Lei shows that the development of the public sphere in China has provided an unprecedented forum for citizens to influence the public agenda, demand accountability from the government, and organize around the concepts of law and rights. She demonstrates how citizens came to understand themselves as legal subjects, legal and media professionals began to collaborate in unexpected ways, and existing conditions of political and economic fragmentation created unintended opportunities for political critique, particularly with the rise of the internet. The emergence of this public sphere—and its uncertain future—is a pressing one with important implications for the political prospects of the Chinese people.
Investigating how individuals learn to use public discourse to influence politics, The Contentious Public Sphere in China offers new possibilities for thinking about the transformation of state-society relations.
