Disciplinary projects and carceral spread: Foucauldian theory and Chinese practice

This paper has a dual object: Fist, utilizing Foucault;s definiation of ‘disciplinary power’, the paper demon-strates the disciplinary nature of China's Reform through labour (laogai) system. It is suggested that laogai is an extension, deepening and modification of certain nineteeenth-century Western utilitarian penal themes designed to ‘reform the criminal mind’ and produce 'obedient subjects'. Second, having established the disciplinary nature of the laogai project, the paper then goes on to examine the (neo-Foucauldian) 'disciplinary dispersal thesis'. This thesis suggestes a gradual spread of carceral technologies which led to the formation of a disciplinary society. this paper suggests that there are a number of theoretical problems in this thesis, not the least of which is its rather ambiguous relationship to the work of Foucault.