Journal and Authors

Oxford Development Studies

Oxford Development Studies (ODS) is a peer-reviewed journal that provides a forum for rigorous and critical analysis of the processes of social, political, and economic change that characterise development.

ODS publishes articles grounded in one or more regions of the world as well as comparative studies. Our intellectual approach is open to work that is interdisciplinary or rooted in a single discipline, such as politics, anthropology, sociology, economics, geography, or history; however, we are committed to the idea that the journal should be relevant and accessible to a readership drawn from across the social sciences. The journal provides an outlet for contributions to development theory and for original empirical analyses, both quantitative and qualitative, as well as mixed methods.

In view of asymmetries in knowledge production and circulation in development studies, the journal seeks to include high-quality research from the perspective of those traditionally marginalised in academic publications. In particular, it aims to expand the range of articles by authors from the Global South.

Article: Yimin Zhao (2022). The performativity of the state in China’s land transformation:a case study of Dahongmen Beijing, Oxford Development Studies, DOI: 10.1080/13600818.2022.2025770

Yimin Zhao, Assistant Professor, School of Public Administration and Policy, RUC

Abstract

The micropolitics involved in urbanising land is yet to be well illustrated in urban and development studies. With the case of Dahongmen in Beijing, this paper explores the governing techniques for dealing with land transformation to uncover the nature and conduct of the state in weaving together land and urban questions. Recognising the power of discourses in enacting actions, this paper focuses on two performative moments of the state in reassembling land for the urban process, corresponding to social (re)ordering and economic mechanisms respectively. Both moments are critical since new ideas, concepts, and calculative rationales are invented to reassemble land into the intermediator of the urban process, whereby the state renews its identity and authority. The state, seen from the perspective of performativity, is more like a process (with structural effects) where certain utterances are made and repeated to incorporate multiple actors in land assemblages for the urban political economy.

Key Words  land politics; urban political economy; state; performativity; urban frontier; China

Highlights

Drawing on 12-month fieldwork in Dahongmen in 2014 and 2015, this paper explores the governing techniques being put into use in dealing with land transformation, so as to uncover the nature and conduct of the state in weaving together land and urban questions. Attending in particular to the discursive dimension of the state, the issue of performativity is brought to the fore. Instead of seeing utterances and words as only representations of other things, it is useful to interrogate the practices ‘by which discourse produces the effects that it names’ (Butler, 2011, p. xii).

Figure 1. The complex pattern of land ownerships in Dahongmen (partial view). Source: BAUPD, 2015

The state, seen from the perspective of performativity, is more like a process (with structural effects) where certain utterances are made and repeated to incorporate multiple actors in constituting land assemblages for the urban change. By decoding the performativity of the state in the urbanising land question, we can see clearly how and to what extent the state is also being reshaped, where certain discourses are uttered not only to enact socio-political effects but also to reconfigure the state itself.

The urban process in Dahongmen is based on speculative rentiership, embodied in a land-based benefit-sharing system, and carried out through evolving governing strategies. In this new land assemblage, discourses on economic rationales and the integration of interest groups are shaped by, and simultaneously shaping, the state in formulating a new manner of disposing land.

Figure 3. ‘Nail households’ in Dahongmen.

Source: photo by author, 12 December 2014.

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Edit: Gaosheng Ye