Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016. xii, 263 pp. (Illustrations.) US$29.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-520-28971-0.
There are many theories associated with modernity and the roles urbanization and economic change play in the social and cultural transformation of places and spaces. As locations are constantly and continuously altered in both subtle and glaring/jarring ways, there comes a need to explain how this all happens, and simultaneously, to identify the impacts of these transformations on people—both as agents of these changes and recipients of these outcomes. Most theories of “modernization,” almost all controversial for one reason or another, are founded to greater or lesser extent on analyses of particular types of places over particular time periods. It is widely recognized there is no universal model. However, even the most ideographic of approaches still recognize the profound effects of certain transformative mainstays such as industrialization, urbanization, and globalization that interact with local political, historical, and cultural forces to foster change. In Andrew B. Kipnis’s 2016 volume, the over-arching goal is to contribute to theory construction related to urbanization and modernization based on his observations and studies during long-term fieldwork and repeated visits to Zouping, a “fourth tier” city in Shandong province, from 1988 to 2013.
Zouping is an excellent location for such an in-depth historical analysis. A small rural town of 8,000 residents in 1935, the county seat reported a population of 50,000 in the 2000 National Population Census. However, as importantly, in 2010 there were already 390,000 people residing in the county of the same name. Defining what is urban and rural has always been problematic in all nations; China is no different. Zouping’s story of town and county is a common one—legal and illegal land acquisitions, industrial expansion, sectoral labor shifts, rapid urbanization, loss of arable land, displacement of farm families, public conflicts, and greater prosperity and less poverty. Thousands of China’s rural county seats have undergone similar journeys, buffeted by, and responding to, similar stimuli. Conveniently, Zouping is also an important place in terms of previous international research on China, given that the town was the focus of significant early work in the 1980s and 1990s by such renowned scholars as Andrew Walder, Jean Oi, Judith Farquhar, Michael Oksenberg, and the author.
At the outset, to place his longitudinal study of Zouping in context, readers are provided with a summation of many of the enduring classical theories that Kipnis persuasively argues do not quite ring true for the Chinese experience. Nor, I imagine, would he argue they are appropriate for most places exposed to the forces associated with contemporary globalization, industrialization, and urbanization. In their place, Kipnis offers a more realistic and flexible argument which he terms “recombinant urbanization.” “Recombinant [urbanization] implies that simultaneous recycling of the old and absorption of the new in the process of social transformation” (225). Long-term China-focused researchers will find this idea appealing as it summarizes what we commonly see “on the ground” both in terms of form and function.
In part one of the volume, Kipnis promotes his idea of recombinant urbanization through historical reviews of urban planning, economic change (industrialization), consumption, and the use of Walter Benjamin’s term phantasmagoria (modern urban life and culture) as viewed through the lens of the historical interactions of related institutions and the people of Zouping. Countering those who would suggest a fair degree of government surrender to neoliberalism in China, Kipnis establishes the significant and enduring role of government at multiple levels for the on-going transformation of all places in China. “In Zouping, the importance of progress, planning and government is clear to many actors” (224). Yet, with excellent detail he recounts how individual actors ranging from billionaires to residents of absorbed villages (termed villages in the city) have countered and manipulated government planning in creating the landscapes of contemporary Zouping. As in many places in China and elsewhere, privatization and government agency in Zouping must seek common ground and compromise. The resulting landscape and culture is recombinant urbanization, manifest at present but originating in the past. Summaries of the rise of Zhang Shiping (said to be the richest man in Shandong province in 2011 [83]) and the Wei Mian Group (at time of writing the largest cloth producer in the world [75]), and other firms including the Xiwang Group, provide concrete examples of how large corporations in China may “drive” urbanization yet must still navigate complex relationships among local agency, political forces, and the capture and use of local and international capital.
The idea of recombinant urbanization is appealing and commendable, but from my perspective, the strength of this book, and its greatest contribution, is Kipnis’s attention to scale. The combination of parts one and two of the book illustrate how forces of economic and political change impact all of Zouping but result in different outcomes based on the scale of analysis, ranging from the city as a whole to neighborhoods and development districts to individuals. Capital and government planners work to transform the city and Zouping’s urban districts, shifting residents and their activities, but industry and government leadership must also negotiate and respond to individual and collective interests. Most effectively, readers experience the effects of policy and economic change at a very personal level through the well-documented and carefully organized interviews that constitute the bulk of part two of the book. In this fascinating second section, the author divides his informants into five representative groups (married migrant blue-collar workers from nearby locales, married migrant blue-collar workers from distant locales, villagers-in-the-city, middle-class families, and youth). Life stories of each type are provided as separate chapters. These life stories are powerful and provide insight into how the citizens of Zhouping have come to where they are now. Interviews of this high quality—of this resolution—are impossible to collect without the empathy and understanding that can only evolve from decades of familiarity and fieldwork. It is through the eyes of these people that we are able to see what has happened to Zouping, and by extension to many similar places in China. Further, it is a testimony to Kipnis’s careful work that we care what happens to these people in the future.
Gregory Veeck
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, USA
pp. 790-792