Changing governmentalities of Neighborhood Governance in China: a Genealogical Exploration

This paper addresses the fundamental question about the ‘becoming’ of the landscape of China’s neighborhood governance. Based on a governmentality framework, it carries out a genealogical review on the neighborhood governance in the Feudal dynasties, Maoist era and post-Maoist era and summarizes the connection between the historical and current governmental rationalities, government technologies and the formation of subjectivities. The conclusion indicates that spatial practice and social norm have always been regarded by Chinese governors as the main approaches to legitimize and consolidate their regimes at the neighborhood level, although different governments used different technologies to design and organize neighborhoods. The rationality of segmenting urban space into administrative unit was inherited by the Maoist government to design enclosed ‘Dan-wei’ compounds and used by the current government to demarcate the boundary of ‘She-qu’ neighborhood as well as implement ‘Wang-ge’ management. The Feudal rituals and Socialist norms on the other hand, shaped hierarchy-respecting and collective subjectivities and to a large extent regulated Chinese people’s behaviors and facilitated the government’s practices. This paper concludes by pointing out that as the fragmenting Chinese society and hybrid government technologies shape diverse, multifaceted and ambiguous subjects, the government will confront more challenges on neighborhood governance

Out of control : Emergent cultural landscapes and political change in urban Vietnam

This paper plots the recent changes in the uses of public space in Hanoi, Vietnam. It is argued that the economic and social changes in contemporary Vietnam have paved the way for a dramatic transformation in the ways in which streets, pavements and markets are experienced and imagined by the populace. The efflorescence of individual mobility, street-trading and public crowding around certain popular events has led to the emergence of a distinct public sphere, one which is not immune from state control and censure but which is a flagrant rebuttal of the state's appeal. The immediate struggles over space herald a new discursive arena for the contest over Vietnamese national imagery as represented in cultural heritage and public space, memorials and state-controlled events which the public are rapidly deserting. The paper concludes by suggesting that the everyday cultural practices that have created a bustling streetlife in urban Vietnam will inevitably provide the vitality and spectacle for the destabilisation of state control in a struggle for meanings in public space

`China Design Now'

This article draws from cultural studies, political theory, international relations, art history and museum studies in order to consider `China Design Now' — the blockbuster exhibition, recently held at the V&A. It argues that, despite the inclusion of a number of interesting exhibits, the attempt to frame contemporary Chinese design independently of political contextualization has led to an exhibition which is largely unsatisfying. The approach taken by the V&A is further shown to have produced several ironic outcomes. First, by attempting to avoid `contentious' political issues, the museum has, in fact, forced the `political' to the fore. Second, by taking such an approach, the V&A demonstrates that it has failed to understand the essentially political nature of the design problem. Third, it has produced an exhibition which appears to advocate a (highly political) neoliberal agenda — one which insists on an inexorable drive towards greater global economic integration. Finally, it has failed to mention its own embeddedness within larger strategies of `cultural diplomacy' and the significance of such strategies for international relations and for cultural production. As well as drawing on a range of relevant literature, the article makes direct reference to exhibition wall texts, exhibit labels and quotations from the catalogue in order to support its argument