Holding a joint professorship with the Faculty of Literature at Beijing Capital Normal University Dutton's work circles around his principle of intellectual interest (social theory) and his principle geographic archive, China. Increasingly the distinction between archive and interest, however, has become blurred.
His earliest major work, Policing and Punishment in China (Cambridge UP 1992), explored the way various Chinese governments disciplined the subject, while his second major work, Streetlife China (1998 Cambridge UP) looked at the popular responses to governmental disciplining. His third book, Policing Chinese Politics (Duke UP 2005) —for which he won the 2007 Levenson Award for the best book on modern China from American Asian Studies Association— explored the underlying dynamic propelling the Maoist revolution while his last book, Beijing Time (Harvard UP), co-authored with former students, revealed another sometimes hidden side to life in the Chinese capital. In his forthcoming book, Dutton explores the concept of the political but once again he does so in a way that highlights certain characteristics that Chinese history helps reveal. Arguing for art rather than a science of the political, Dutton’s work offers a more liquid and affective understanding of the political.
Areas of supervision
China, postcolonial and postmodern theory, everydayness and the metropolis. Chinese policing and punishment.
Publications and research outputs
Book
Dutton, Michael; Lo, Hsiu-ju Stacy and Wu, Dong Dong. 2010. Beijing Time. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674047341
Dutton, Michael. 2009. Building a Gift of Politics. In: M. Farquhar, ed. 21st Century China: Views from Australia. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 31-55. ISBN 978-1-4438-1259-7
