Search

The paper contributes to the literature on rural gentrification by incorporating empirical evidence from amenity-poor rural areas in the developing world. While current literature on rural gentrification has largely focused on the gentrification process in amenity-rich rural areas, the present study examines rural gentrification process in a historically polluted county in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China. The gentrification process features a holistic transformation of farmland into an artificial landscape, thereby segregating gentrifiers from both polluted rural space and unwelcoming urban space. The paper attributes the rise of holistic gentrification to state-initiated farmland concentration, and to the gentrifier developers' practices of redefining rurality as immersive resort experiences. The paper concludes that the holistic gentrification was conducive to job losses in both the recreation and agricultural sectors, consequently reducing peasant households to a state of passivity and dependency, while collective actions against gentrifier developers were ineffective owing to highly skewed power dynamics. • Holistic gentrification transforms large-scale farmland into scenic rural resorts in amenity-poor rural areas in China. • Holistic gentrification is caused by national peasant relocation programs. • Gentrifier developers redefine rurality as immersive resort experience. • Holistic gentrification is conducive to local job losses in recreation and agricultural sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Poverty Alleviation Resettlement (PAR) in Yi villages in Sichuan triggers local resistance. • Tactics of governmentality and resistance are described and analyzed. • A framework of resistance to governmentality, "working the government" is developed. Resettlement studies in China and globally draw upon Michel Foucault's description of governmentality, classing resettlement programmes as power-laden activities, in which planning practices reorganise the built environment and life arrangements and redefine the identities of relocated populations to achieve political and economic objectives. However, few studies on resettlement in China have conducted an in-depth analysis of local resistance to the tactics of governmentality. This article builds on the literature on the governmentality of resettlement and develops a theoretical framework of resistance to governmentality, "working the government", by combining insights from Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman, applying the framework to empirical evidence. This is achieved through analysis of the micro-politics of power in poverty alleviation resettlement (PAR) programmes in two Yi villages in Leshan and Liangshan Prefectures, Sichuan Province, and close examination of innovative tactics of resistance developed by local Yi minorities. The study shows that resettled households re-utilised and took advantage of elements of the resettlement programme, adapted those elements to their new ends and separated themselves from the subjectivities imposed by the programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing interest in understanding China's environmental governance through the lens of governmentality. This article contributes to that discussion by using the Foucauldian analytical apparatuses of discipline and security to understand China's governance of farmland. It argues that the Chinese state applies these two apparatuses simultaneously: on the one hand, it disciplines and deters local states from illegal land grabs by utilizing surveillance tools such as remote sensing and national land surveys; on the other hand, it relies on indirect governance through the land quota market to achieve grain security, transforming both local states and peasants into autonomous market players, and reconstructing China's rural landscape by launching mass peasant relocation programmes. The study also reveals the contingent effects of those power tactics: the state's governance is compromised by the local states' counter‐conduct, such as data fabrication and concealment, and by the peasants' denial of their new subjectivity as market players. When the tactics are effective, as in the case of local states actively assuming roles of land quota producers and traders, the villages and peasant households suffer from deprivation of land rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]