A digital promised land? Digital landscape as a heterotopia for disabled people in China

ABSTRACT

This article applies Foucault’s concepts of heterotopia and governmentality to further explore the complexity of the relationship between disability and the digital landscape. To do so, we focus on the digital disability practices in China, where there are 85 million disabled people in residence. Based on ethnographic online participant observation, we explain why and how China’s digital landscape serves as a heterotopia of disability governmentality through practices of ‘conduct-of-conduct’, ‘counter-conduct’, and ‘self-conduct’. This qualitative research demonstrates why and how the Chinese government utilizes the digital landscape to govern disabled people, while the disabled people in the country resist this governance and attempt to self-govern. This study’s results suggest three theoretical implications for future studies – a possible spatial turn in disability studies, a need in disability research to highlight the state’s role, and a heterotopic imagination when researching disability and the digital landscape.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital landscape
• disability
• Foucault
• governmentality
• heterotopia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Zhongxuan Lin (Ph.D.) is a Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China. His research interests include disability studies, cultural studies and communication studies. His work has appeared in Media International Australia; Chinese Journal of Communication; International Journal of Communication; International Journal of Cultural Studies; Media, Culture & Society; New Media & Society; and Information, Communication & Society among others. Email: [email protected]

Liu Yang (Ph.D.) is an associate professor at the School of Communication and Design, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China. Her research interests include disability studies and political studies. She has published articles in New Media & Society, Information, Communication & Society, Disability & Society, International Communication Gazette, etc. Email: [email protected]