Dualities of semi-urbanization villages in social-spatial transition: A case study of Zhoucun village in suburban Nanjing, China

In contrast with the classical topics of poverty and exclusion of rural areas, the multiple dualities in the social-spatial dimension of villages in semi-urbanized suburbs of China’s large cities have received little attention to date. As this paper demonstrates, such dualities have emerged during China’s rapid urbanization since the early 2000s. It is firstly argued that these dual characteristics are derived from the institutional separation of urban and rural entitlements (e.g., hukou, welfare, land property ownership etc.). These distinctions are then projected into social capital differentiation, such as the division between the strong and weak ties of local community residents. Consequentially, the dualities are embodied in the residential space segregation between established residents and rural migrants that is divided into Houses in Single-Family Occupancy (HSFOs) and Houses in Multiple-Family Occupancy (HMFOs). To support these claims, a case study of the village of Zhoucun, a southern suburb of the Nanjing Metropolitan Area on the east coast China, is used. This draws on both quantitative and qualitative data that includes interviews with authorized officers from local government to municipal government, and a questionnaire survey and interviews with both the HSFO and HMFO residents themselves.
相对学术界一贯关注的乡村地区贫困和分隔现象,中国大城市边缘区半城市化地区多重社会空间二元性特征很少谈及。本文认为,自新世纪以来,多重二元性已经在快速城市化地区初现端倪。首先,这一多重二元性始于城乡制度性赋权的差异,例如户籍、福利、土地所有制等的城乡二元差异;继而,制度性二元差异被投射、转录到诸如地方邻里、社区尺度的强弱社会维系(strong and weak ties)这一对社会资本的差异之中;最终,制度性差异和社会资本分隔被固化为半城市化地区单户居住空间(HSFOs)与多户居住空间(HMFOs)的居住形式分异。据此,本文针对大城市南京郊区的周村为例,采用定量和定性相结合,问卷与访谈方法相依托的方法证实了上述过程和机制。
作者:吴启焰、张晓玲、徐逸伦和李沺。论文目前在线刊载于《Journal of Rural Studies》。
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