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Across the great divide : the sent-down youth movement in Mao's China, 1968-1980
\"Introduction Of all the political campaigns that reconfigured daily life in the first three decades of the People's Republic of China, the sent-down youth movement that sent 17 million urban youth to live in rural China in 1968-1980 is one of the most vividly remembered and hotly debated. Mao's 1968 call for re-education catapulted urban youth into a world of rural poverty they would otherwise never have known. Memorialized in fiction, films, art exhibits, and even an orchestral performance, the movement is commonly branded a misguided revolution, a forced relocation, and a sacrifice of youth. The victimization of sent-down youth has been invoked to symbolize the suffering of all Chinese people during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Whether former sent-down youth look back on that era as one of deprivation that handicapped them or as one that honed their ability to navigate adversity, their years living in the countryside constituted the pivotal experience for a generation that came of age during the Cultural Revolution\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Commodity frontiers and the transformation of the global countryside: a research agenda
Over the past 600 years, commodity frontiers – processes and sites of the incorporation of resources into the expanding capitalist world economy – have absorbed ever more land, ever more labour and ever more natural assets. In this paper, we claim that studying the global history of capitalism through the lens of commodity frontiers and using commodity regimes as an analytical framework is crucial to understanding the origins and nature of capitalism, and thus the modern world. We argue that commodity frontiers identify capitalism as a process rooted in a profound restructuring of the countryside and nature. They connect processes of extraction and exchange with degradation, adaptation and resistance in rural peripheries. To account for the enormous variety of actors and places involved in this history is a critical challenge in the social sciences, and one to which global history can contribute crucial insights.
Journal Article
Engaging the global countryside: globalization, hybridity and the reconstitution of rural place
This article applies Massey's (2005) call for a relational understanding of space that can challenge aspatial readings of globalization to the study of globalization in a rural context. Critiquing existing rural research for tending towards studies of global commodity chains and overarching processes of globalization, it argues for more place-based studies of globalization as experienced in rural localities. The concept of the `global countryside' is introduced as a hypothetical space that represents the ultimate outcome of globalizing processes, yet it is noted that the characteristics of the `global countryside' find only partial articulation in particular rural spaces. Understanding this differentiated geography of rural globalization, it is argued, requires a closer understanding of how globalization remakes rural places, for which Massey's thesis provides a guide. The article thus examines the reconstitution of rural places under globalization, highlighting the interaction of local and global actors, and of human and non-human actants, to produce new hybrid forms and relations. As such, it is argued, the politics of globalization cannot be reduced to domination or subordination, but are instead a politics of negotiation and configuration.
Journal Article
Planning centrality, market instruments
This article defines the key parameters of ‘state entrepreneurialism’ as a governance form that combines planning centrality and market instruments, and interprets how these two seemingly contradictory tendencies are made coherent in the political economic structures of post-reform China. Through examining urban regeneration programmes (in particular ‘three olds regeneration’, sanjiu gaizao), the development of suburban new towns and the reconstruction of the countryside, the article details institutional configurations that make the Chinese case different from a neoliberal growth machine. The contradiction of these tendencies gives room to urban residents and migrants to develop their agencies and their own spaces, and creates informalities in Chinese urban transformation.
本文定义了“政府企业家主义”作为一种将集中规划与市场手段相结合的治理形式有哪些关键参数，并诠释了这两种看起来相互矛盾的倾向在改革开放后中国的政治经济结构中是如何融汇的。通过考察城市再生计划（尤其是“三旧改造”）、郊区新城的开发和乡村重建，本文详细剖析了使中国的情况与新自由主义增长机器不同的制度格局。这两种倾向的矛盾性使城市居民和移民发展了能动性和自身空间，并造就了中国城市转型中的非正规性。
Journal Article
Effective Policy Implementation in China's Local State
Effective policy implementation is a core component of the Chinese political system's adaptability and stability. A thorough investigation of local implementation mechanisms, however, is often hindered by an almost exclusive concentration on implementation efficiency. This article introduces a new analytical framework and suggests focusing on the interactions between the different administrative tiers—counties, townships, and villages—to understand local policy implementation in terms of procedural and outcome effectiveness. It argues that the triangle of central policy design, institutional constraints, and strategic agency of local implementers explains cases of effective policy implementation that can be observed throughout China. By way of studying the \"Building of a New Socialist Countryside\" in four cases, this article shows how effective policy implementation can be the result of what students of local governance have so far rather treated as obstructive factors, namely performance and cadre evaluation, financial scarcity, limited public participation, and the focus on models.
Journal Article
The natural capital of city trees
City trees can help to reduce pollution and improve human health The term “natural capital” refers to elements of nature that, directly or indirectly, produce value for people. Determining the location and quality of natural capital assets, and the ecosystem services that they provide for human well-being, is now underway in many countries, not just in the countryside but also across cities. One example of such natural capital is provided by city trees, which can take up substantial amounts of carbon dioxide ( 1 ) and also cause local cooling, thereby ameliorating the urban heat island effect ( 2 ). City vegetation can also reduce pollution and improve human health. However, understanding the characteristics of particular species is critical, and planting the wrong species in the wrong places can cause unintended problems.
Journal Article
Cosmopolitan Immigration Attitudes in Large European Cities: Contextual or Compositional Effects?
Europe is geographically divided on the issue of immigration. Large cities are the home of Cosmopolitan Europe, where immigration is viewed positively. Outside the large cities—and especially in the countryside—is Nationalist Europe, where immigration is a threat. This divide is well documented and much discussed, but there has been scant research on why people in large cities are more likely to have favorable opinions about immigration. Debates about geographic differences generally highlight two explanations: contextual or compositional effects. I evaluate the two with data from the European Social Survey, the Swiss Household Panel, and the German Socio-Economic Panel. Results support compositional effects and highlight the importance of (demographic and cultural) mechanisms that sort pro-immigration people into large cities. This has several implications for our understanding of societal divisions in Europe; most notably that geographic polarization is a second-order manifestation of deeper (demographic and cultural) divides.
Journal Article
Late Roman «villae» and the «rus»: Interrogating Rural Interdependencies in the Ebro River Valley (Navarra, Spain)
The last century of archaeological exploration has brought to light many late antique villae (mid-3rd – early-5th centuries CE), and much has been made of the ways these sites visually reinforce the increasingly fraught patron-client relations that characterize the late antique world in scholarship. My paper challenges these assumptions, using material evidence to illustrate a more complex, symbiotic relationship between late antique villae and the rus. The late Roman countryside was stratified, but to presume an especially oppressive relationship between estates and rural populations is to perpetuate synthesis of this period as synonymous with decline, and to disregard more nuanced evidence in the archaeological record. I discuss cult structures on three estates in the Ebro River Valley in ancient Tarraconensis (Spain) to argue that villae courted and catered to sub-elite rural population groups, who were themselves receptive to such offerings. By highlighting these interdependencies, this paper aims to bring greater contour to our understanding of the mechanisms animating the provincial countryside in late antiquity. En el último siglo de excavaciones, muchas villae tardoantiguas (siglos III-V d. C.) han sido descubier tas en el Mediterráneo occidental, y la investigación ha analizado el modo en que estas villae refuerzan visualmente las relaciones entre comitentes y clientes, que se creen más tensas en la Antigüedad tardía que en el periodo imperial. Este artículo cuestiona esas suposiciónes, se utiliza la arqueología y la cultura material de las villae tardorromanas para proponer una relacion más compleja y de simbiosis entre comitentes y clientes, y entre las villae tardoantiguas y el campo. En la Antigüedad tardía el campo era estratificado, pero suponer una relacion especialmente opresiva entre las villae y las poblaciones rurales es perpetuar el estereotipo de la Antigüedad tardía como un periodo de decadencia al igual que supone ignorer las realidades de la arqueología. Para demostrarlo, se analizan los edificios de culto de tres villae tardorromanas del valle del Ebro en la provincia Tarraconense. Se discute que las villae proveyeran espacios de culto a las personas del campo (algunos que no pertenecientes a la élite); esas personas eran receptivas a estos servicios. Este estudio pretende recalcar las independencias entre villae y las populaciones rurales, y comprender mejor los mecanismos que organizan el campo tardorromano.
Journal Article
More-than-land: conserving the social fabrics of the Kat O coastal settlements in Hong Kong
This article examines the unique self-organised spatial and social structure of the Kat O coastal settlements in Hong Kong. By problematising the
identity politics
between
built forms
and
landscapes
, this paper analyses the village’s deep-rooted history within the land‒water dichotomies, which have been shaped by government survey methods and conservation-development policies. Specifically, it presents the peri-urban condition of Kat O’s coastal settlements as a departure from the traditional urban‒rural continuum perspectives. Empirically, the field documentation of the self-built additions presents critical perspectives into the static understanding of land ownership, addition and adaptation strategies and the building materialities embedded within the government survey methods and conservation-development policies. Theoretically, this study provides an understanding of these coastal settlements as cultural landscapes that are dynamically related to the environment, as well as the changing sociocultural relationships among different communities on the basis of their unique conceptions of habitation and living. By examining past and current conservation policies, this article advocates for a water-centric vision for countryside conservation in Hong Kong that transcends the commonly adopted terrecentric perspective.
Journal Article
Temples as centres of communal networks: a case study of South Lantau
In the countryside, where intensive rural development and rising property values have been observed since the late 1970s, the preservation and meaning of traditional dwellings have emerged as crucial considerations in shaping Hong Kong’s countryside conservation policy. The focus of this paper is on the conservation of temples, as we are drawn to these structures not only for their architectural merit but also for their role as public buildings within the countryside. Consequently, their cultural significance is heavily influenced by the stakeholders they are associated with, distinguishing them from other types of dwellings.
This paper examines the coastal landscape of South Lantau, which includes several villages with distinct traditions that have undergone significant transformations since the 1960s. Located at the southwest edge of Hong Kong, Lantau Island had a rural lifestyle that was relatively undisturbed before WWII because of the difficulty in accessing the island. However, in response to the large people influx from China's mainland after 1949, the Hong Kong government introduced the Lantau Development Plan in 1953, mainly to open up new sources of freshwater resources for Hong Kong Island. The construction of South Lantau Road in 1955 and Shek Pik Reservoir in 1957 gradually led to the decline of agricultural activities in South Lantau and the population exodus of local villagers, resulting in a rupture to regional traditions.
In multilineage communities such as the villages on South Lantau, worship of a common deity provides a vital source of social bonding, particularly for an area long beset by typhoons, piracy and banditry. Local people pray for safety and prosperity through collective rituals and celebratory activities. Therefore, temples are not only religious establishments but also embody the sense of social solidarity among villagers on South Lantau. Through the case study of three rural villages on South Lantau, this paper examines how temples play an important role in the continuity of the communal network amid repercussions from the postwar disruption of traditional rural life. Significantly, this pilot study also draws attention to the functions of temples in their historical context. It emphasises the importance of recognising and re-evaluating these buildings for cultural enhancement as part of community engagement. This study provides valuable insights for future conservation efforts for religious buildings in the countryside.
Journal Article