Digital governance with smart sensors: exploring grid administration in Zhejiang’s “Future Community”

Abstract

Abstract This study explored sensor-based e-government practices in eight pilot “Future Communities” in Zhejiang Province, China. Adopting the approach of “e-government in everyday practice,” it examines how grid members at the grassroots level make sense of smart sensors and their mediated governance through the parameters of passive response, collaborative human and nonhuman networks, and calculability. In an emerging sensing environment, grid members are exposed to contradictory governance regimes, experimenting with and performing competing sets of discourses and actions that are either efficient or inefficient, manual or automatic, and progressive or regressive. Neither facilitated nor emptied by sensor-enabled Weberian functions, they actively improvise along with the dynamism of specific local interactions and situations. However, currently sensors and attendant technologies merely leave space for them to engage in ambiguities and negotiations concerning the extent and boundaries of technical solutionism rather than opening up possibilities for empowerment to refine the forms of governance.