The “designed surprise”: Rethinking the temporality of affect in policying the street

Most local authorities deploy exclusionary regulations towards informal street vending, while recent studies suggest that some cities also adopt inclusive policies. This paper examines the case of Puyang City in China, revealing that street-level bureaucrats utilize affective governance techniques to balance these opposing regulatory approaches. The diverse future routines of affective governance—such as “uncertainty,” “hope,” and “waiting”—primarily focus on the tension between the actual and the virtual. Drawing on observations, interviews in Puyang, and critical discourse analyses of relevant official documents and news reports, I examine the affective tactics—“designed surprise”—to uncover the ambiguous governance strategies employed by street-level bureaucrats in navigating the tension between exclusionary regulations and inclusive policies. The interruptions that occur between the actual and the virtual, manifested as “surprise” allow us to enrich the understanding of temporal structure by exploring the directional interplay between pastnesses and the future. My study contributes to the politics of temporality by exploring the coexistence of multiple temporalities.