Living with Digital Surveillance in China. Citizens’ Narratives on Technology, Privacy, and Governance

Digital surveillance is a daily and all-encompassing reality of life in China. This book explores how Chinese citizens make sense of digital surveillance and live with it. It investigates their imaginaries about surveillance and privacy from within the Chinese socio-political system. Based on in-depth qualitative research interviews, detailed diary notes, and extensive documentation, Ariane Ollier-Malaterre strives to ‘de-Westernize’ the internet and surveillance literature. She shows how the research participants weave a cohesive system of anguishing narratives on China’s moral shortcomings and redeeming narratives on the government and technology as civilizing forces. Although many participants cast digital surveillance as indispensable in China, their misgivings, objections, and the mental tactics they employ to dissociate themselves from surveillance convey the mental and emotional weight associated with such surveillance exposure. The author also reflects on fieldwork in China as a foreign researcher. She discusses the choices she has made to reduce her Eurocentric biases and what she has learned about interviewing in a context of political censorship.

Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, Ph.D., is a Management Professor and the Canada Research Chair in Digital Regulation at Work at the University of Quebec in Montreal (ESG-UQAM). Her research examines digital technologies and the boundaries between work and life across different national contexts. She has co-authored over 75 chapters and articles in management, sociology, psychology, and information systems journals. She co-chairs the Technology, Work and Family research community of the Work and Family Researchers Network and has received the Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research.