The smart camp as classroom: Control, education, and agency in Muslim internment in Northwest China

Abstract

This article considers how technology and the Chinese models of camp governance affect camp detainee agency in contemporary Xinjiang, China. It shows how the models of camp governance used to control Uyghurs and other Muslim peoples emerge from the history of the Maoist education system in China. It also considers how this education model of governance is met by a new control model of automated surveillance. Drawing on repeated and ongoing interviews with former detainees as well as police documents, this article examines how detainees themselves are ranked in the order of the cell, and the digital, aural, and textual content of camp instruction. Ultimately, the article argues that a camp governance model of coercive education does offer detainees some partial forms of autonomy. Paradoxically, in part because of the contradiction between the two governance models, human agency is not fully lost in the midst of intense forms of detainee trauma.