How did Chinese citizens imagine their political subjectivity under the zero-COVID regime? Our patchwork netnography of social media discussions (2020–22) analyzes how China's pandemic governance generalized and intensified “biopolitical paternalism”—a mode of rule that fused security, care, and economic rationality under the figure of a protective state. Our discursive, dynamic, and diachronic approach traces how people engaged in scalar inquiries about responsibility and community, alternately embracing, enforcing, and critiquing state power while internalizing and interrogating its neoliberal logic. As the implicit social contract—trading compliance for protection—began to fray, citizens envisioned a national community of shared suffering and challenged the regime's necropolitics. These struggles reveal how biopolitical paternalism shapes citizenship imaginaries in contested, uneven ways, with implications beyond China's pandemic moment.
{"title":"Pandemic, paternalism, and the (im)possibilities of citizenship in China","authors":"Zhiying Ma, Yaochu Bi, Naiyu Jiang","doi":"10.1111/amet.70017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.70017","url":null,"abstract":"<p>How did Chinese citizens imagine their political subjectivity under the zero-COVID regime? Our patchwork netnography of social media discussions (2020–22) analyzes how China's pandemic governance generalized and intensified “biopolitical paternalism”—a mode of rule that fused security, care, and economic rationality under the figure of a protective state. Our discursive, dynamic, and diachronic approach traces how people engaged in scalar inquiries about responsibility and community, alternately embracing, enforcing, and critiquing state power while internalizing and interrogating its neoliberal logic. As the implicit social contract—trading compliance for protection—began to fray, citizens envisioned a national community of shared suffering and challenged the regime's necropolitics. These struggles reveal how biopolitical paternalism shapes citizenship imaginaries in contested, uneven ways, with implications beyond China's pandemic moment.</p>","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"52 4","pages":"401-413"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/amet.70017","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145436514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unstable ground: The lives, deaths, and afterlives of gold in South Africa By Rosalind C. Morris. New York: Columbia University Press, 2025. 656 pp.","authors":"Nicholas Bainton","doi":"10.1111/amet.70026","DOIUrl":"10.1111/amet.70026","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"52 4","pages":"499-500"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145188455","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fraternal critique: The politics of the Muslim community in France By Kirsten Wesselhoeft. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2025. 218 pp.","authors":"Sharif Gemie","doi":"10.1111/amet.70013","DOIUrl":"10.1111/amet.70013","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"52 4","pages":"509-510"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145116350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Enchanted modernities: Ancestral vitalizations in the upper Mekong By Micah Morton. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2025. 278 pp.","authors":"Asmus Rungby","doi":"10.1111/amet.70015","DOIUrl":"10.1111/amet.70015","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"52 4","pages":"521-522"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145116354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hoarding New Guinea: Writing colonial ethnographic collection histories for postcolonial futures By Rainer F. Buschmann. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2023. 265 pp.","authors":"Pascale Boucicaut","doi":"10.1111/amet.70006","DOIUrl":"10.1111/amet.70006","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"52 4","pages":"501-502"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145116349","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"In the time of Ebola: Youth, family, and emergency in Sierra Leone By Jonah Lipton. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2024. 162 pp.","authors":"Hannah Brown","doi":"10.1111/amet.70012","DOIUrl":"10.1111/amet.70012","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"52 4","pages":"503-504"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145116353","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Affect ethnography: Exploring performance and narrative in the creation of unstories By Cristiana Giordano and Greg Pierotti. London: Bloomsbury, 2024. 289 pp.","authors":"Meghan Rose Donnelly","doi":"10.1111/amet.70010","DOIUrl":"10.1111/amet.70010","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"52 4","pages":"507-508"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145116352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Father time: A natural history of men and babies By Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024. 432 pp.","authors":"Caroline MacLean","doi":"10.1111/amet.70008","DOIUrl":"10.1111/amet.70008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"52 4","pages":"517-518"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145072664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The copy generic: How the nonspecific makes our social worlds By Scott MacLochlainn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022. 232 pp.","authors":"Robert Moore","doi":"10.1111/amet.70007","DOIUrl":"10.1111/amet.70007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48134,"journal":{"name":"American Ethnologist","volume":"52 4","pages":"519-520"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145072666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：
京公网安备 11010802042870号