IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v58y2021i8p1581-1597.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reconfiguration of state–society relations: The making of uncompromising nail households in urban housing demolition and relocation in Dalian, China

Author

Listed:
  • Chen Li

    (Institute of Future Cities, Department of Geography and Resource Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)

  • Mark Yaolin Wang
  • Jennifer Day

    (The University of Melbourne, Australia)

Abstract

Based on an ongoing housing demolition and relocation project in Dalian, this article describes uncompromising nail households, who have resisted resettlement through intractable conflict and prolonged bargaining. Building upon a state–society approach, this article reveals a new relationship between state, society and governance in the institutional background of neoliberal urbanism in China. Uncompromising nail households within this transforming governance system are able to individually equip and maintain their resistance. The article identifies heterogeneous uncompromising nail households: ‘hard’, who maintain a firm stance throughout the bargaining process; and ‘hardened’, who increase resistance during the process of bargaining. These findings contribute to understanding of the reconfiguration of state–society relations, and demonstrate significant contradictions between the central and local states in the dynamics of change in neoliberal urbanism in China.

Suggested Citation

  • Chen Li & Mark Yaolin Wang & Jennifer Day, 2021. "Reconfiguration of state–society relations: The making of uncompromising nail households in urban housing demolition and relocation in Dalian, China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(8), pages 1581-1597, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:58:y:2021:i:8:p:1581-1597
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098020912151
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098020912151
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0042098020912151?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lorentzen, Peter L., 2013. "Regularizing Rioting: Permitting Public Protest in an Authoritarian Regime," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 8(2), pages 127-158, February.
    2. Xuefei Ren, 2015. "City power and urban fiscal crises: the USA, China, and India," International Journal of Urban Sciences, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 73-81, March.
    3. Hsing, You-tien, 2010. "The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199568048.
    4. Cai, Yongshun, 2008. "Power Structure and Regime Resilience: Contentious Politics in China," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(3), pages 411-432, July.
    5. Him Chung, 2013. "The Spatial Dimension of Negotiated Power Relations and Social Justice in the Redevelopment of Villages-in-the-City in China," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(10), pages 2459-2476, October.
    6. Ya Wang & Lei Shao & Alan Murie & Jianhua Cheng, 2012. "The Maturation of the Neo-liberal Housing Market in Urban China," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(3), pages 343-359.
    7. Xiang Li & Sun Sheng Han & Hao Wu, 2019. "Urban consolidation, power relations, and dilapidated residential redevelopment in Mutoulong, Shenzhen, China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(13), pages 2802-2819, October.
    8. Mi Shih, 2010. "The Evolving Law of Disputed Relocation: Constructing Inner‐City Renewal Practices in Shanghai, 1990–2005," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(2), pages 350-364, June.
    9. White, Gordon & Howell, Jude A. & Shang Xiaoyuan,, 1996. "In Search of Civil Society: Market Reform and Social Change in Contemporary China," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198289562.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhang, Wei & Li, Yuqing & Zheng, Caigui, 2023. "The distribution characteristics and driving mechanism of vacant land in Chengdu, China: A perspective of urban shrinkage and expansion," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    2. Shengyue Fan & Xijing Luo & Peitao Han, 2023. "Conflict Resolution between Multi-Level Government and Farmers in Land Expropriation Based on Institutional Credibility Theory: Empirical Evidence from Shandong Province, China," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-22, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Qinran Yang & David Ley, 2019. "Residential relocation and the remaking of socialist workers through state-facilitated urban redevelopment in Chengdu, China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(12), pages 2480-2498, September.
    2. Chen, Huirong, 2022. "Linking institutional function with form: Distributional dynamics, disequilibrium, and rural land shareholding in China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    3. Zheng Wang, 2022. "LIFE AFTER RESETTLEMENT IN URBAN CHINA: State‐led Community Building as a Reterritorialization Strategy," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(3), pages 424-440, May.
    4. Yanpeng Jiang & Paul Waley, 2020. "Who Builds Cities in China? How Urban Investment and Development Companies Have Transformed Shanghai," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(4), pages 636-651, July.
    5. Zhao Zhang & Niamh Moore-Cherry & Declan Redmond, 2018. "A Crisis of Crisis Management? Evaluating Post-2010 Housing Restructuring in Nanjing, China," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(1), pages 29-49, January.
    6. Fulong Wu, 2016. "China's Emergent City-Region Governance: A New Form of State Spatial Selectivity through State-orchestrated Rescaling," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(6), pages 1134-1151, November.
    7. Graeme Lang & Bo Miao, 2013. "Food Security for China's Cities," International Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(1), pages 5-20, February.
    8. Siu Wai Wong & Bo-sin Tang & Jinlong Liu & Ming Liang & Winky K.O. Ho, 2021. "From “decentralization of governance†to “governance of decentralization†: Reassessing income inequality in periurban China," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(6), pages 1473-1489, September.
    9. Hyun Bang Shin & Loretta Lees & Ernesto López-Morales, 2016. "Introduction: Locating gentrification in the Global East," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(3), pages 455-470, February.
    10. Nan Guo & Edwin Hon Wan Chan & Esther Hiu Kwan Yung, 2020. "Alternative Governance Model for Historical Building Conservation in China: From Property Rights Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-16, December.
    11. Yuan Ma & Heng Liang & Han Li & Yaping Liao, 2020. "Towards the Healthy Community: Residents’ Perceptions of Integrating Urban Agriculture into the Old Community Micro-Transformation in Guangzhou, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(20), pages 1-21, October.
    12. Tingzhu Li & Ran Liu & Wei Qi, 2019. "Regional Heterogeneity of Migrant Rent Affordability Stress in Urban China: A Comparison between Skilled and Unskilled Migrants at Prefecture Level and Above," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(21), pages 1-26, October.
    13. Ma, Shuang & Mu, Ren, 2020. "Forced off the farm? Farmers’ labor allocation response to land requisition in China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    14. Chen Li & Shenjing He, 2023. "‘Carrot and stick’ approach to housing demolition and relocation under flexible authoritarianism in urban China," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-9, December.
    15. Xuanyi Nie, 2023. "The ‘medical city’ and China’s entrepreneurial state: Spatial production under rising consumerism in healthcare," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(6), pages 1102-1122, May.
    16. Nguyen, Quang & Kim, Doo-Chul, 2020. "Reconsidering rural land use and livelihood transition under the pressure of urbanization in Vietnam: A case study of Hanoi," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    17. Shen, Tiyan & Yao, Xinyi & Wen, Fenghua, 2021. "The Urban Regeneration Engine Model: An analytical framework and case study of the renewal of old communities," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    18. Si-ming Li & Sanqin Mao & Huimin Du, 2019. "Residential mobility and neighbourhood attachment in Guangzhou, China," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(3), pages 761-780, May.
    19. Siu Wai Wong, 2016. "Reconsolidation of state power into urbanising villages: Shareholding reforms as a strategy for governance in the Pearl River Delta region," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(4), pages 689-704, March.
    20. Luca Salvati & Adele Sateriano & Eftathios Grigoriadis, 2016. "Crisis and the city: profiling urban growth under economic expansion and stagnation," Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 329-342, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:58:y:2021:i:8:p:1581-1597. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.