Technologies of Power and BruHealth Biopolitics amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic in Brunei Darussalam

Abstract

The pandemic has been a turning point in the technologies of power deployed by the state to contain and address the COVID-19 crisis. Whereas planning and discussions on the Industrial Revolution 4.0 in the Sultanate of Brunei Darussalam had been ongoing for several years, the pandemic became an unexpected catalyst for the realisation of these digitalisation plans with the launching of a onestop mobile application called BruHealth. This article sheds light on public responses to the COVID- 19 crisis, including the state’s approach in containing the virus and a critical examination on the use of the BruHealth. Upon identifying general patterns and discourses from the data collected intermittently in the period between 2019 and 2022, the article aims to be a contribution to the epistemological debates on the place of technologies in “biopolitics” on the digitalisation of personal experiences and on self-reflexivity in the fieldwork process of collecting and analysing data during the COVID-19 crisis.