Abstract
Informed by Foucault’s governmentality, this article examines the making
of the smart home in China. Operating within the nexus of security and
risk, smart homes foster a discourse of the ‘the good life’ that
accelerates AI’s integration into the population’s daily life. Taking
Xiaomi (a renowned smart home technology company) as a case study, I
trace how commercial practices formulate issues of security and risk in
three smart home products: smart door lock, home surveillance camera and
virtual home assistant. Drawing on visual and discourse analyses of
Xiaomi’s promotional materials, this analysis is structured around three
levels of relationships: (a) trust and ontological security; (b) the
practices of government and the practices of self (c) and the
technologisation of Chinese society. This analysis demonstrates that
Xiaomi further advances the state-driven technologisation of Chinese
society, in which subjects are guided to embrace the positive dimensions
of technology for self-actualisation and self-management. However, the
technology that makes domestic life and the physical home more reliable,
less prone to risks and more secure has at the same time further eroded
social relations and trust.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 108-127 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | Science, Technology and Society |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 17 Feb 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Mar 2023 |
Scopus Subject Areas
- Arts and Humanities(all)
- Social Sciences(all)
- Economics, Econometrics and Finance(all)
- Business, Management and Accounting(all)
- Cultural Studies
- Communication
User-Defined Keywords
- artificial intelligence (AI)
- China
- governmentality
- risk
- security
- smart home
- Xiaomi
- home automation
- the good life
