The Monkey King's Curse: Child Surveillance Technology In Shanghai Homes

Surveillance technologies are prevailing on a global scale,in both public spheres and private sectors.Existing research criticizes these devices function as a part of externally imposed power apparatus,causing alienation in subjectification.By examining the use of two specific types of technological products in urban families in Shanghai – the Brain-machine-interface headband monitoring user’s real-time level of concentration and domestic cameras – this article situates the deployment of surveillance technologies in the contexts of the changing moral landscape in contemporary China and the national education fever as a result of the burgeoning neoliberal governance.Generally applied to supervise children’s studies,these technologies are imbued with ethical valences.The parents deploy them to supplement the unfulfilled supervisory obligation,while the children come to terms with them in attempting to acknowledge their parents’ care and also see the supportive value of such devices to help them cultivate self-discipline or zijue.For the latter,surveillance technologies serve as a means of ethical self-making in their practices of reflective freedom.