Constructing Population Problems: Governmentality and Computational Analysis of Discursive Shifts in Chinese Official Media, 1946–2024

• In Event: Sociology of Culture Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 7. Contemporary Chinese Cultural Governance

Abstract

How has the population been constructed as knowledges and mobilized as tools to legitimate the social control of bodies in China over the past eight decades? Using computational text analysis on People’s Daily—the most authoritative government newspaper in China, the study traces the thematic changes surrounding population issues. Theoretically grounded in Foucault's “governmentality,” this research views government narratives as a cultural infrastructure of social control, which produces “truths” about the population to justify interventions into private life in the service of national goals. This study also concerns state legitimacy through flexible discourse, sustaining authority even as narratives and knowledges produced are historically contingent and, at times, contradictory. By tracing these discursive shifts, this research shows how knowledges about the population both shape and are shaped by governing priorities, configuring the interpretation, problematization, and governance of the population across changing political contexts.

Author

• Shirley Boya Ouyang, University of California-Irvine