Cultural strategies of development: implications for village governance in China

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, culture has come to be recognized as a significant regional development resource in China. This paper raises the question of whether cultural strategies of development have ameliorated or exacerbated the government's increasing inability to provide for the public's basic needs. Specifically, it asks: what are the implications of China's cultural strategies of regional development for locallevel governance? Three case study villages in Guizhou are examined, each revealing different ways that villages have engaged state development strategies, each with different outcomes. I argue that cultural strategies of development in China introduce a capital logic that greatly influences village governance. Cultural strategies create economic value where none before existed and thus initiate new struggles over ownership among villagers, state actors and entrepreneurs. The privatization of cultural resources has presented new challenges to village governance even while it has been promoted as both an answer to the fiscal challenges faced by many rural communities and a key to the establishment of a new kind of rural citizen.

Political tool or quality experience? Urban livability and the Singaporean state’s global city aspirations

“…Based on state aspirations documented in this article, it is clear that the vision for Singapore is a cosmopolitan one (Yeoh, 2004). It follows then that the heartlander is rendered "second-class" juxtaposed against the cosmopolitan equipped with transnational sensibilities, creative skillsets and self-improvement sensibilities-the very subjectivity that contributes to the state's desired governance outcomes (Oakes, 2006)-as well as the ability to thrive in Singapore's modernized residential and municipal environments. Because of the state's purposeful implementation of the livability project, heartlanders who make up the vernacular population are increasingly estranged from their "progressively livable" living environments as well as the larger spaces of the nation, which become increasingly emblematic of state aspirations.…”

Dfahp Multicriteria Risk Assessment Model for Redeveloping Derelict Public Buildings

“…Because derelict buildings are categorized as real estate, real estate project efficiency evaluations (Ginevicius and Zubrecovas, 2009) should be performed before selecting the re-development project. For example, factors such as location (Leitham et al, 2000), public facilities (Thisse and Wildasin, 1992;Aitken and Fik, 1998;Jeon and Amekudzi, 2005;Litman, 2007), urban planning and development (Shukla and Waddell, 1991), cultural action (Newman and Smith, 2000;Oakes, 2006;Matarasso, 2007), tourism (Ap and Crompton, 1998), adaptive reuse (Heath, 2001;Rossi, 2003;Bullen and Love, 2011), social interaction (Cattell et al, 2008), rehabilitation costs, and construction time (Campbell, 1996), should be considered. Derelict buildings are useless until they are repaired or partially reconstructed.…”

The Uses of Reconstructing Heritage in China: Tourism, Heritage Authorization, and Spatial Transformation of the Shaolin Temple

“…The theme-park features of Disneyland do not claim to be 'authentic' but rather they explicitly display a realm of fantasy and encourage tourist performativity. Recent research in China indicates that some heritage-based villages clearly display the features of a Disneyland-style theme park [59,60].…”