Emerging divided cities in China Shen, Jie; Xiao, Yang
Urban studies (Edinburgh, Scotland),
05/2020, Letnik:
57, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Compared with North America andWestern Europe, Chinese cities used to feature a low extent of socioeconomic segregation. However, systematic analysis of the changes in socioeconomic segregation after ...the end of the provision of welfare housing is needed. Using residential-committeelevel data from the fifth and sixth censuses of Shanghai, for the first time, this article systematically charts changes in socioeconomic segregation in Chinese cities over the period 2000–2010. Along with the emergence of high-status neighbourhoods and migrant neighbourhoods, Shanghai has grown more divided based on individual socioeconomic status. The extent of socioeconomic segregation in Shanghai was comparable to that of large US and European cities. While patterns of sociospatial divisions are different across central and suburban areas, the level of educational segregation becomes greater than that of hukou segregation. The crucial role of housing commodification in driving these changes highlights the importance of contextual and institutional factors in understanding the dynamics of segregation.
与北美和西欧相比，中国城市过去的社会经济隔离程度较低。但是，我们需要对福利住房供应结束后社会经济隔离的变化进行系统分析。本文首次利用上海第五次和第六次人口普查的居委会层面数据，系统地描述了2000 - 2010年中国城市社会经济隔离的变化情况。随着高档社区和移民社区的出现，上海在个人社会经济地位方面变得更加分化。上海的社会经济隔离程度与美国和欧洲大城市相当。虽然市中心和郊区的社会空间割裂情况不同，但教育隔离的程度已经大于户口隔离的程度。住房商品化在推动这些变化方面的关键作用凸显了背景直觉因素在理解隔离动态方面的重要性。
This paper examines the commodification process initiated through a series of state-led programs and questions the sustainable public goods provision in rural China. We challenge the unilateral ...understanding of spontaneous commodification by the profit-seeking community, and argue that the influence exerted by the Chinese government cannot be ignored. It is found that a preliminary partnership among the state, private investors and villagers was formed to create a hot-spring village called Tangjiajia in suburban Nanjing. The reconstruction was the result of a state-led renovation of the built environment, but it also catalyzed villager entrepreneurship and boosted community consensus. Regarding the public goods provision, stakeholders in the village now enjoy high-quality facilities and services provided by the government for free but have failed to foster reciprocal cooperation to replenish the subtractability of the rural commons. We claim that state intervention is temporal but not a cure-all. A pricing mechanism for the sustainable delivery of public goods is urgently needed in the community. The state-led commodification has undermined the previous low-level equilibrium of rural governance. From the stance of rural sustainability, only self-organization of the rural community can solve the dilemma.
•Government wields built environment programs to revitalize the countryside.•The state-private-farmer partnership is initially established.•Stakeholders fail to replenish subtractability of rural commons.•Sustainable provision of rural commons is still in question.
Agriculture is not only an essential nexus between society and nature but in its current industrial form also a possible threat to ecological stability. This article explores how a supplement to the ...conventional agrifood system alleviates the negative consequences of the industrial food production system that manifest through the metabolic rift (Marx, 1981). During fieldwork in Estonia ten semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted to analyze the practice of Food Self-Provisioning (FSP) in (peri-)urban dachas – a Russian term for a plot of land with a seasonal allotment house, mostly used for food production.
Using McClintock's (2010) three-dimensional framework of metabolic rift that consists of ecological, social and individual dimensions, we demonstrate how FSP not only contributes to mending all these rifts but also increases resilience on various levels. As a region-specific practice of “quiet sustainability” (Smith and Jehlička, 2013) it displays an environmentally friendly alternative to the conventional agrifood system and serves as a strong example of sufficiency and moral economy. Furthermore, by its practice it not only challenges the continuous commodification process of ‘fictitious commodities’, such as land, labor and food (Polanyi, 2001; McClintock, 2010), but it defies market logic in general. Therefore, this article proposes FSP as a viable, but largely underestimated and even stigmatized, model of alternative sustainability, already widely practiced in post-socialist Europe.
•Food Self-Provisioning has ecological, social and individual motives and features.•Cultivating a garden contributes to the de-commodification of land, labor and food.•Gardeners demonstrate high levels of pro-environmental behavior and concern.•Gardening counters feelings of alienation from nature and (fruits of) labor.•‘Dachas’ provide an additional socio-economic buffer, thus increasing resilience.
This study examines the popular practices of Chinese urbanism in which commodification of urban land has been actively pursued by municipal governments as a means of revenue generation in the era of ...neoliberalisation. The research identifies a complex, diverse and self-conflicting internal dynamics that characterised the Chinese state, reveals the political and financial motives of local governments to engage in urbanism and maps out the emerging geography of neoliberal urbanism. Land commodification has become a main source of municipal finance accounting for over 30% of total municipal budgetary revenue and nearly 40% of the fund for urban maintenance and construction. An inverse U-shaped relationship is found between the importance of land commodification to municipal finance and the level of urban economic growth. A similar relationship is identified for land-based municipal finance and degree of openness.
This article conceptualizes carceral economies of migration control. First, I argue that ‘privatization’ signals a reorganization of authority, rather than a relocation of ownership from public to ...private domains. Second, I argue for greater attention to the socio-technical practices of valuation specific to migration control through which commodification becomes possible. Third, this reorganization of authority has produced (1) status value, a form of value specific to immigration policing’s juridico-political position; and (2) valuation practices that translate, commensurate and circulate migrant life as a marketizable entity.
The 'Blue Economy' is an increasingly popular term in modern marine and ocean governance. The concept seeks to marry ocean-based development opportunities with environmental stewardship and ...protection. Yet different actors are co-opting this term in competing, and often conflicting ways. Four conceptual interpretations of the Blue Economy are identified, through examination of dominant discourses within international Blue Economy policy documents and key 'grey' literature. The way the Blue Economy is enacted is also examined, through an analysis of the Blue Economy 'in practice', and the actors involved. Finally, the scope of the Blue Economy is explored, with a particular focus on which particular marine industries are included or excluded from different conceptualizations. This analysis reveals areas of both consensus and conflict. Areas of consensus reflect the growing trend towards commodification and valuation of nature, the designation and delimitation of spatial boundaries in the oceans and increasing securitization of the world's oceans. Areas of conflict exist most notably around a divergence in opinions over the legitimacy of individual sectors as components of the 'Blue Economy', in particular, carbon-intensive industries like oil and gas, and the emerging industry of deep seabed mining.
•Interrogates tradeoffs in carbon markets between efficiency and local development.•Argues that tradeoffs are produced in the process of carbon commodification.•Develops a political ecology analysis ...of common property forest governance.•Calls into question market mechanisms for forest-based climate change mitigation.
Carbon markets have gained traction worldwide as an ostensibly win–win solution to climate change, providing low-cost emission reductions in the Global North and sustainable development in the Global South. However, sustainable development and livelihood co-benefits have largely failed to materialize in a range of carbon offset projects, particularly those in forest communities. While some scholars explain this failure as an outcome of fundamental tradeoffs between market efficiency and sustainable development, others argue that institutions of common property land tenure can resolve tradeoffs and generate important co-benefits for local communities. Using a political ecology approach, integrating insights of Karl Polanyi and Noel Castree on the commodification of nature and evidence from a carbon forestry project in Chiapas, Mexico, this article grapples with the ways in which carbon market requirements shape forest governance within common property tenure arrangements. I argue that the centralization of forest governance and decision making into the hands of project implementers and brokers, the necessity for legible land rights and boundaries, and the technical requirements for measurement, calculation, and monitoring of carbon have reshaped forest governance in ways that have undermined the social and ecological benefits often associated with common property management schemes. This research therefore demonstrates that so-called tradeoffs between market efficiency and equitable sustainable development goals may not be inherent to carbon forestry and calls into question the reliance on disembedding market mechanisms for climate change mitigation in forest ecosystems. As such, this work has important implications for REDD+.
Agricultural-land sale prices in India exponentially increased during post-reforms period. This article studies operation of agricultural-land sale market and its implications in Andhra Pradesh ...during 2001–2017. It is based on primary data from six villages in three regions. The results show that sale prices of unit agricultural land have skyrocketed, and they are no way related to returns from land. The rich, non-cultivating households are increasingly buying agricultural land at higher prices for non-cultivating purposes and left fallow. They treat agricultural land as gold for store value, speculative trading, tax benefits, etc. The higher land sale prices along with depleting returns tempted distressed small farmers to sell their land. Consequently, cultivating small farmers are pushed to supply-side of land market as distressed sellers but not on the demand side of land market as buyers. Agricultural land is slowly but permanently going away from the hands of cultivator to noncultivators. Continuation of these trends has an adverse impact on equity and efficiency in agriculture land ownership in the state.
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