Government Next Door

Luigi Tomba

Description

Chinese residential communities are places of intense governing and an arena of active political engagement between state and society. In The Government Next Door, Luigi Tomba investigates how the goals of a government consolidated in a distant authority materialize in citizens' everyday lives. Chinese neighborhoods reveal much about the changing nature of governing practices in the country. Government action is driven by the need to preserve social and political stability, but such priorities must adapt to the progressive privatization of urban residential space and an increasingly complex set of societal forces. Tomba's vivid ethnographic accounts of neighborhood life and politics in Beijing, Shenyang, and Chengdu depict how such local "translation" of government priorities takes place.Tomba reveals how different clusters of residential space are governed more or less intensely depending on the residents' social status; how disgruntled communities with high unemployment are still managed with the pastoral strategies typical of the socialist tradition, while high-income neighbors are allowed greater autonomy in exchange for a greater concern for social order. Conflicts are contained by the gated structures of the neighborhoods to prevent systemic challenges to the government, and middle-class lifestyles have become exemplars of a new, responsible form of citizenship. At times of conflict and in daily interactions, the penetration of the state discourse about social stability becomes clear.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Sociology
• History of Asia
• China

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 21 août 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801455209
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Government Next Door

The Government Next Door

NeighborhoodPolitics in Urban China

LuigiTomba

CornellUniversityPress IthacaandLondon

Cornell University Press gratefully acknowledges receipt of a Subsidy for Publication grant from the Chiang Chingkuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (USA), which generously assisted in the publication of this book.

Copyright © 2014 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2014 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2014

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Tomba, Luigi, author.  The government next door : neighborhood politics in urban China / Luigi Tomba.  pages cm  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 9780801452826 (cloth : alk. paper)  ISBN 9780801479359 (pbk. : alk. paper)  1. City and town life—China. 2. Urban policy—China. 3. China—Social conditions—2000– I. Title.  HT147.C48T66 2014  307.760951—dc23 2014004766

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetablebased, lowVOC inks and acidfree papers that are recycled, totally chlorinefree, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Cloth printing Paperback printing

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Cover photograph: Inner cityneighborhood in Jinan, Shandong Province, October 2010. Photograph by Luigi Tomba.

Acknowledgments

Contents

Introduction:TheNeighborhoodConsensus

1.SocialClustering:NeighborhoodsandtheGoverning of Social Distinction

2.MicroGoverningtheUrbanCrisis

3.HousingandSocialEngineering

vii

1

29 62 88

4.ContainedContention:Interests,Places,Community, and the State117 5.AContagiousCivilization:Community,Exemplarism,andSuzhi141 Conclusion:ArenasofContentionandAccommodation165

Notes Bibliography Index

183 203 219

Acknowledgments

IwenttoChinaforthefirsttimetwentysixyearsago.Ittooktimeand the wisdom of many kind people to learn about that country and its people, to learn what to look for, to shape some questions—the right questions, I hope. My first acknowledgment should be for the ride and for all the fellow travelers—way too many to fit in here. Some of them are teachers, some are family, some, by an accident of age more than knowledge, were students, some were friends, and some were all of the above. Researchforthisbooktookalmostadecade,andtheAustralianNa tional University was my intellectual home during this time. Here I found my main sources of support, stimulation, and engagement with colleagues, mentors, and friends. The characters below are listed in order of appear ance. All of them played, consciously or unconsciously, a role in the mak ing of this book. InthekitchenoftheContemporaryChinaCentre,JonUngerfirsten gaged me in a conversation about China’s middle class. For their mentor ing and friendship, as well as many other conversations in that kitchen and

v i i i A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

elsewhere, many dinners and dry jokes, I owe Jon and Anita Chan a debt of gratitude. AttheContemporaryChinaCentreImetotherimportantcolleagues. With Andy Kipnis I have shared a decade of editorship ofThe China Jour naland the intellectual discoveries that came with it. Ben Hillman has, much to my frustration, a heavy forehand on the tennis court, which he counterbalances with weighted suggestions on my work. Now he and Lee Anne have two beautiful girls who are part of my family as well. Other res idents of the center who have generously offered their comments at various times include Graeme Smith, Bob Miller, Peter Van Ness, and Tom Cliff. Iamalsoindebtedtotheexpertise,mentoring,andkindnessofmycol leagues and students in the Department of Political and Social Change, where I worked until 2010, during which time the bulk of this book was shaped: Ben Kerkvliet, whose homegrown veggies are sorely missed now that he has moved back to Hawaii with Melinda; Paul Hutchcroft; Sally Sargeson; Tamara Jacka; Ed Aspinall; Greg Fealy; and all other colleagues and graduate students that regularly commented at my seminars and en dured my stories of Chinese neighborhoods. From2010IfoundanewhomeintheAustralianCentreonChinain the World (CIW). The support of the center and of its director, Geremie R. BarmÉ, during the last three years made it possible to complete the task. Geremie’s generosity with his comments and time—from the first time he cast his eye on a rather tentative grant application almost ten years ago—as well as the continuous challenge he provides to our way of thinking about China have been an invaluable source of inspiration. MyCIWcolleaguesBenPennyandJaneGolley,GloriaDaviesandSue Trevaskes and a community of doctoral students and postdoctoral fel lows also provided a stimulating intellectual environment during the final stages of this work. Carolyn Cartier has been the partner of many engag ing conversations on “the urban” in China. CIW’s administrative staff as well as Cathryn Husdell, Merrilyn Fitzpatrick, Nancy Chiu, Jasmine Lin, and Tanya Fan put up with my anxieties with professionalism and inde fatigable smiles. Markuz Wernli rescued some of my old photos that found their way into the book. Analmostendlesslistofothercolleagueshaveofferedpreciouscom ments and incisive criticisms of my work at different stages, and their work has acted as a constant motivation: David Goodman, Deborah Davis, Vivienne Shue, Kevin O’Brien, Li Zhang, Martin K. Whyte, Tony Saich,

A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s i x

Dorothy Solinger, Lisa Hoffman, Kathy Morton, Michael Dutton, and Brge Bakken. I have also learned a lot from those who have written about this topic, including Ben Read, David Bray, Thomas Heberer, Christian Goebel, Cho Munyoung, and Friederike Fleischer. Finally, I benefited greatly from the generous comments of the two anonymous readers, who helped me refinemyargumentsandchallengedmetopushmyargumentfurther. Toconducttheresearchthatleadtothisbook,Ihavereliedonagreat many people. First and foremost are community workers, activists, resi dents and cadres, whom I will not mention by name but whose stories and ideas are the core of the book. YuXianyangfromRenminUniversitywasanoutstandingacademic host and collaborator. He came along on my Shenyang visits, shared much of the pain and joy of those days, and was instrumental to my access to these communities. His wisdom and sociological work on communities was the foundation of my understanding of these institutions. Beibei Tang put up with my way of traveling and my obsession for debriefing at the end of field days and offered sustained support and brilliant ideas that I hope have found their way into this book. Ivan Franceschini was tireless and enthusiastic in searching for information and in offering one bright new idea per day, at least. JanelleCaiger,whoworkedwithmeandAndyKipnisastheassistant editor ofThe China Journalfor more than a decade, also provided research assistance and hammered my messy text and endnotes into shape. Lindy Allen patiently created the index. LibrariansattheANU’sMenziesLibrary(DarrellDorringtonandhis colleagues) and at the National Library of Australia (Di Ouyang and her colleagues) helped me mine new material, material I often did not even know existed. BesidestheinstitutionalandfinancialsupportoftheANU,mywork has been supported by four different grants, two from the Australian Re search Council (DP0662894 and DP0984510) and two from the German Research Foundation (TO 638 12 and TO638 21), for which I am grate ful. I am also grateful to the Research Office of the College of Asia and the Pacific, Yasuko Kobayashi and Judith Pabian in particular, for its help with my grant applications. Thisbookincludesexcerptsfromtheauthor’sfollowingarticles,re printed with permission: “Creating an Urban Middle Class: Social En gineering in Beijing,”China Journal,no. 51 (January 2004): 1–26; “Of