Dutton, Michael R. 1957-

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Dutton, Michael R. 1957-

PERSONAL:

Born September 8, 1957, in Sunderland, England; citizenship: Australian; son of Robert Munro and Jean Dutton; married Deborah Kessler (a teacher); children: Tavan. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: Griffith University, B.A. (with first-class honors), Ph.D.; Beijing Languages Institute, graduate diploma.

ADDRESSES:

Home—West Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Office—Department of Political Science, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; fax: 03-9334-7906. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Educator and writer. University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia, lecturer in Chinese politics and language at Asian Studies Centre, 1988-90; University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, began as lecturer, became reader in Chinese politics and social theory, 1990—.

WRITINGS:

The Crisis of Marxism in China, School of Modern Asian Studies (Nathan, Queensland, Australia), 1983.

Policing and Punishment in China: From Patriarchy to "the People," Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1992.

(Editor) Streetlife China, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1998.

Policing Chinese Politics: A History, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2005.

(With Hsiu-ju Stacy Lo and Dong Dong Wu) Beijing Time, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2008.

Coeditor, Postcolonial Studies.

SIDELIGHTS:

Michael R. Dutton once told CA: "My interest in Chinese policing and punishment developed in a somewhat unusual way and, as a result of that, my book [Policing and Punishment in China: From Patriarchy to "the People"] is more than an empirical account of police and prison structures in China. I began work in this area only to exemplify certain points I wished to make with regard to Chinese theories of socialist transition. The Chinese prisons interested me, as they constituted one of the few remaining prison regimes in the world that (beyond the rhetoric) still seemed to believe in the (rather nineteenth-century) view that prisons are the site of personal transformation. Moreover, they saw the issue of criminal transformation as part of the broader issue of socialist transformation. It was at this point that my interest in Marxist theories of transition were wed to the question of punishment, and it was as a result of this wedding that I began to flirt with a very different set of concerns that finally led to the birth of my book.

"If this work still bears the birthmarks of the original research project, my current research goes even further. I am in the process of examining the relationship between a nation obsessed with modernization and a Marxism free of the self-critical elements introduced through the Frankfurt school. I am interested in the way the problematic status of post-1978 Chinese Marxism, with its belief in a telos of liberation through economic development, has not led to a question of that telos, but only to a question of the vehicle of transformation. In this latter work, currently in progress, I move from a theoretical position underpinned by the concerns of Michel Foucault (which featured prominently in Policing and Punishment in China) to the general concerns of Walter Benjamin in his ‘arcades project.’

"In my university work, I have always endeavored to go beyond the standard Asian studies approach to problems, which I always found to be quite limiting. I have always tried to produce work that is both empirically grounded and theoretically informed and engaged. I have tried to develop a type of writing practice that uses theory but ‘loops the loop,’ producing commentary not only upon a particular empirical area, but upon the theory as well. In this respect, I guess I am trying to work toward a new form of Asian studies."

Dutton later added: "I have long been interested in developing a more theoretically nuanced version of Asian studies. In this regard, my work has tried to bring together concrete empirical themes and the theoretical endeavors being inspired by the ‘new humanities.’ As a result of this, I have grown increasingly interested in the new inter-disciplines of cultural studies and postcolonialism. The result has been a broadening of both my theoretical and empirical interests. Part of the reason for this broadening of interests comes from my editorship (with Leela Gandhi and Sanjay Seth) of the journal Postcolonial Studies."

As editor of Streetlife China, the author draws on newspapers, government documents, academic writing, and interviews to reveal a picture of everyday life in China. This look at postrevolutionary Chinese society in the modern era focuses on themes such as the emergence of a market-driven consumer culture and issues of human rights. "Michael Dutton is in the opinion of this reviewer the most gifted China analyst working today with poststructuralist methods and concepts," wrote Social Justice contributor Arif Dirlik in a review of Streetlife China.

Dutton's 2005 book, Policing Chinese Politics: A History, takes a comprehensive look at the history of Chinese politics in the twentieth century beginning in the late 1920s through the Cultural Revolution. In the process he examines issues of revolutionary violence and the political passions and ideology that drove the revolution. "In Policing Chinese Politics, Michael Dutton utilizes key case studies from Maoist and reformera China to revise history and reinterpret politics," wrote Lisa Fischler in the Canadian Journal of History. The author largely examines how Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong and the Community Party focused on harnessing the passions of commitment and revolutionary excess. The author's analysis of Chinese politics also reflects on what the author sees as the most widely held common activity of Chinese communist politics and policing, namely discerning who was the movement's friend and who was the enemy. Referring to Policing Chinese Politics as an "excellent and original history," Pacific Affairs contributor Gregor Benton went on to note in the same review: "This is essentially an empirical history, but it is heavily freighted with theory."