Reimagining Policing Through the Ethics of Care: Insights From Chinese Narratives and Practices

Xueying Mao, Rosila Bee Mohd Hussain and Fonny Dameaty Hutagalung
Additional contact information
Xueying Mao: Faculty of Criminal Science and Technology, Guangxi Police College, China / Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya, Malaysia
Rosila Bee Mohd Hussain: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya, Malaysia
Fonny Dameaty Hutagalung: Faculty of Education, University of Malaya, Malaysia

Social Inclusion, 2026, vol. 14

Abstract: This article reexamines the foundations of policing by advancing homo curans —the caring human—not as a normative ideal, but as an emergent institutional rationality and governance disposition. Positioned as a counter‐logic to the long‐dominant homo economicus model of instrumental rationality, the study analyzes how security is increasingly reframed as a mechanism of collective care, structured by interdependence and responsiveness rather than coercion alone. Methodologically, the study combines critical discourse analysis of 300 Chinese media reports on policing (2014–2024) with 28 semi‐structured interviews involving frontline officers, experts, and citizens. This design traces how homo curans functions as both a discursive legitimation frame and an operational logic across institutional texts and frontline practices. Findings reveal a gradual but uneven “care turn” in Chinese policing narratives. While early coverage emphasized deterrence, performance, and procedural control, post‐2019 discourse increasingly featured relational and preventive vocabularies such as “linkage,” “home visits,” and “warm enforcement.” Pandemic‐era reversals briefly restored coercive frames, yet post‐2022 governance reforms consolidated care‐centered narratives. Interview data corroborate this shift, identifying a routinized de‐escalation → explanation → referral → follow‐up pathway and a dual foundation of legitimacy: procedural correctness and relational recognition. The article contributes to policing studies by demonstrating that homo curans represents a substantive shift in governance logic, moving beyond the binary of coercion versus service to reveal care as an empirically institutionalized dimension of contemporary statecraft.

Keywords: China; critical discourse analysis; ethics of care; homo curans; institutional rationality; policing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/11948 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:socinc:v14:y:2026:a:11948

DOI: 10.17645/si.11948

Access Statistics for this article

Social Inclusion is currently edited by Mariana Pires

More articles in Social Inclusion from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().