Producing exemplarity: Performance making in a Chinese prison

Abstract

Penal order is closely linked to the broader social order in China and the disciplinary side of its maintenance. This article seeks to demonstrate, through the case of performance making, what order means to the Chinese prison authority, and how prisoners comply with and sometimes defy the system based upon various motivations. Using data from an ethnographic study on performance making in a men's prison during 2015–2018, this study aims to understand how an 'exemplary order' is maintained, and what kinds of compliance and resistance can be found. The findings suggest that “theatre in prisons” is not a Western invention to be borrowed, but a long-established institutional mechanism of order mainetence in China, as participation in prison's activities represents compliance with the regime order. However, compliance is also utilized by the prisoners not only for hedonistic gains but also for gaining social capital, which can have a strong positive influence on their quality of life inside and earlier release. This study will also demonstrate how the Chinese penal order maintenance shares similirities with modes of soft power found in British prisons, as well prisoner-officer collaboration found in other Global South countries, with a twist

Functions of background music among prisoners and staff in the Chinese prison workplace

“…Studies of Chinese prisons mostly focus on prisoner adaptation (Liu and Chui, 2014;Liu et al, 2020;Zhao et al, 2020), programme evaluation (An et al, 2019;Qiu et al, 2017;Yang et al, 2018;Zhao et al, 2019), staff attitudes (Jiang et al, 2018;Lambert et al, 2018aLambert et al, , 2018b, and prisoner-staff relationships (Cheng, 2019;Liu and Chui, 2016). There is little research on the cultural life inside Chinese prisons, and the only existing studies about performance-making inside are mostly focused on the political and administrative side of cultural life (Zhang 2021(Zhang , 2022. Is there any un-institutionalised prison cultural activity?…”