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The Government Next Door: Neighborhood Politics in Urban China

Online ISBN:
9780801455209
Print ISBN:
9780801452826
Publisher:
Cornell University Press
Book

The Government Next Door: Neighborhood Politics in Urban China

Luigi Tomba
Luigi Tomba
Australian National University
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Published:
3 July 2014
Online ISBN:
9780801455209
Print ISBN:
9780801452826
Publisher:
Cornell University Press

Abstract

Chinese residential communities are places of intense governing and an arena of active political engagement between state and society. This book 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. This book depicts how such local “translation” of government priorities takes place. It 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.

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