Monkey King’s Golden Headband: Domestic Surveillance Technology as a Moral Journey in Chinese Urban Families

Abstract

ABSTRACT This research investigates domestic surveillance technology (DST) in Chinese urban families, engaging with anthropological studies on morality/ethics and technology. In contemporary China, ambivalent child-rearing values make parental surveillance a subject of ethical reflections and negotiations. Interrogating the result-oriented perspective that prevails in studies on surveillance technologies, I demonstrate the complicated relevance between DST and two reconfiguring virtues: guan (to control/care) and zijue (self-consciousness). With a focus on two devices – the smart home camera and the brain–machine-interface headband monitoring the concentration level – my ethnography conducted alongside middle-class families in Shanghai reveals that living with DST constitutes a moral journey towards becoming a good parent and child, albeit unknown and possibly arduous. This research illustrates one possibility of ethical-technological assemblage under the condition of moral friction that it can become one material embodiment of endeavours to meet moral expectations or surpass dilemmas.