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'Droning on' in China: the disaffected futurity of technopatriotism Callum Alexander Smith (24293012) PUREID: 690601895 <p dir="ltr">This thesis examines how drones are circulating as promissory technologies in contemporary China, arguing that these technologies have become central to the circulation of a powerful form of technopatriotism that underpins Xi Jinping’s so-called ‘China Dream’. Based on multi-sited and multi-year ethnographic fieldwork in China and the UAE between 2023 and 2026, it reveals the ways that drones are mobilised across various domains to generate attachments to shiny visions of technological futurity, whilst simultaneously producing uneven forms and (non)intensities of detachment amid conditions of disaffection.</p><p dir="ltr">In showing this, the thesis makes three conceptual contributions to critical studies of the drone and transdisciplinary work on materiality and affect. Firstly, it offers a theorisation of technopatriotism as a politically significant atmospheric formation that which attachments to state-commissioned technological futures are circulated and, crucially, made durable. Second, it conceptualises drone technologies as heterogeneous ‘attachment-detachment’ devices, in order to show how they make available attachment to state-led visions of progress, while concurrently enabling and recycling negotiated forms of detachment and ambivalence. Finally, it draws on fieldwork interviews and observations to introduce the concept of 混 (hùn), which I translate as ‘droning on’, to access the forms of drift and negotiated aperture to the promises animating China’s ‘post-optimistic present’.</p><p dir="ltr">Pursuing moments of disruption and contestation from the engineered and orchestrated promises of a technopatriotic dream, I trace these circulations empirically across the drone trade show, practices of smart urbanism (including drone delivery) in Shenzhen, as well as fantasies of the drone techno-fix amidst ecological collapse, often associated with discourses of Ecological Civilization. It is across these varied sites that I show the drone emerging as politically significant devices through which attachments and detachments to the (non)intensities of technopatriotism are being (re)negotiated.</p> 2026-09-29T14:57:54Z Text Thesis 10.17034/32805911.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/_Droning_on_in_China_the_disaffected_futurity_of_technopatriotism/32805911 All Rights Reserved Open Access after 2031-12-31