Individual Paper
4. Seeing from the Neighbourhood: States, Communities and Human Mobility
In contemporary Chinese megacities, the changing idea around greenery and the consequent commodification of green areas, which are often privatized and turned into gentrified enclaves, changes the local community’s dynamic relationship with the territory in terms of accessibility to the resources and aesthetical normativity. Culturally defined as “beautiful landscapes” are elite-managed, while other possibly neglected green landscapes are left behind from the ecological civilization narrative. This gap allows these liminal spaces to be filled with material and emotional power dynamics at the grassroots level, possibly escaping the Western-centric language of urban gardening to navigate localized possibilities of meaning-making along the rapid urbanization process. Based on ethnographic data, and critical discourse analysis of posters, advertisements, and spatial imagery, this paper investigates the complex urban-rural planning strategy in the city of Chongqing in southwest China, particularly the late urbanized peri-urban districts where the appearance of crop and vegetable fields takes place as an attempt at spatial negotiation against the authoritarian governance of local and (trans-)national power actors. Amidst the increasing loss of rights to the commons and immaterial heritage, such as agricultural techniques, and the widespread discourse of food security and sanitation in the organic production process, local gardening as a form of resistance against social fragmentation, mobilizes bodies, objects, and languages to reconstruct a sense of belonging in a changing environment by performing individualized acts of care towards the land.
Michela Bonato
University of Padova, Italy