Professor Michael Dutton
Staff details

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. 《中国的规制与惩罚:从夫权本位到人民本位》, 清华大学出版社, 北京。 Policing and Punishment in China; from Patriarchy to ‘The People’. 清华大学出版社 Qinghua University Press.
Dutton, Michael. 2005. Policing Chinese Politics: A History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN 0822334771
Dutton, Michael. 1998. Streetlife China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521637190
Book Section
Dutton, Michael. 2018. Preface: The Postcolonial and Political in Wang Min’an, in Wang Min’an. In: , ed. Domestic Spaces in Post-Mao China: On Electronic Household Appliances. Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 9780415784856
Dutton, Michael and Hindess, Barry. 2016. Governmentality Studies and China: Toward a ‘Chinese’ Governmentality. In: David Bray and Elaine Jeffreys, eds. New Mentalities of Government in China. London: Routledge, pp. 16-29. ISBN 978-1138917750
Dutton, Michael. 2011. Das Regiment der Gewalt: Polizieren des Politischen in der Volksrepublik China The government of violence: Policing the Chinese political; a short history. In: Alf Leudke; Herbert Reinke and Michael Sturm, eds. Polizei, Gewalt und Staat im 20. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, pp. 105-130. ISBN 978-3-531-18266-7
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
Dutton, Michael. 2009. Passionately Governmental: Maoism and the Structured Intensities of Revolutionary Governmentality. In: Elaine Jeffreys, ed. China's Governmentalities: Governing Change, Changing Government. London: Routledge, pp. 24-38. ISBN 978-0-415-54744-4
Dutton, Michael. 2009. Asian Cultural Studies: Recapturing the Encounter with the Heterogeneous in Cultural Studies. In: Chris Berry; Nicola Liscutin and Jonathan D. Mackintosh, eds. Cultural Studies and Cultural Industries in Northeast Asia: What a Difference a Region Makes. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press, pp. 37-50. ISBN 9789622099746
Article
Dutton, Michael. 2017. The gift of the political. Social Identities, 23(6), pp. 730-740. ISSN 1350-4630
Dutton, Michael. 2017. Spaces of the political. Architectural Research Quarterly, 21(3), pp. 265-276. ISSN 1359-1355
Dutton, Michael. 2016. Cultural Revolution as Method. The China Quarterly, 227, pp. 718-733. ISSN 0305-7410
Dutton, Michael. 2012. “Fragments of the Political or How we Deal With Wonder”. Social Text, 30(1), pp. 109-141.
Dutton, Michael. 2010. The paradoxical after-life of colonial governmentality. Social Identities, 16(5), pp. 635-649. ISSN 1350-4630
Dutton, Michael. 2010. The Square: A Political Anthropology of the Built Environment. Time+Architecture, 4, pp. 88-101.
Dutton, Michael. 2008. Building a Gift of Politics. Communication, Politics & Culture, 41(1), pp. 78-98.
Dutton, Michael. 2008. Passionately governmental: Maoism and the structured intensities of revolutionary governmentality. Postcolonial Studies, 11(1), pp. 99-112. ISSN 1368-8790
Dutton, Michael. 2005. From Culture Industry to Mao Industry: A Greek Tragedy. boundary 2, 32(2), pp. 151-167. ISSN 15272141
Dutton, Michael. 2004. Mango Mao: Infections of the Sacred. Public Culture, 16(2), pp. 161-187. ISSN 15278018
Dutton, Michael. 2002. Lead Us Not Into Translation: Notes Toward a Theoretical Foundation for Asian Studies. Nepantla: Views from South, 3(3), pp. 495-537. ISSN 15270858
Digital
Dutton, Michael; Martin, David and Driver, Adam. 2009. Political Passion Affective Communities in China and the West.