Resisting Dignity Takings in China

Abstract

In the course of urbanization in the People's Republic of China, tens of millions of citizens have experienced expropriations of collectively owned land, expropriations of privately owned buildings, and evictions from urban land in state ownership. Summarily characterizing these measures as takings, I argue, first, that some takings observed have denied evictees dignity, understood as respect for their intrinsic moral worth and moral autonomy, in addition to dispossessing them of their land and homes. Second, in dignity takings, monetary compensation and resettlement schemes may fail to reflect the harm done to evictees by framing disputes over takings as (forced) economic bargains. Third, some victims unable to seek redress through judicial avenues have been driven into extrajudicial protest and resistance. In some cases, resistance can be restorative of dignity, but where repressive state responses to resistance prevent this potential from being realized, the injustice of dignity takings can be further aggravated.

Law and Precariousness in an Authoritarian State: The Case of Illegal House Construction in Vietnam

“…. [it is] an apparatus of violence that disorders, disrupts, and repositions pre‐existing relations and practices all in the name of an allegedly superior order.” The more people avoid and resist the power of the law, the more enduring and resilient law becomes as a source of exploitation, repression, and injustice (Springer ; Pils ). The precarious lives of low‐income residents who make precarious decisions in the face of few opportunities are made even more precarious by losing their homes, investments, and neighborhoods in the name of law in the pursuit of broader state developmental interests.…”

Dignity Takings and Dignity Restoration: Creating a New Theoretical Framework for Understanding Involuntary Property Loss and the Remedies Required

“…In her account of how China's rapid urbanization has resulted in the frequent displacement of rural people, Pils (2016) deepens our understanding of what qualifies as a dignity taking and what does not. Although all lands are in socialist public ownership and inalienable in China, private ownership of buildings (but not the underlying land) is allowed.…”

“…Based on the South African case study, the existing definition of dignity takings requires the property confiscation to occur “without paying just compensation or without a legitimate public purpose.” Pils (2016) argues that even if the Chinese state pays just compensation and the taking is for the legitimate purpose of economic development, a dignity taking has still occurred because the method used to acquire the land and remove its inhabitants was dehumanizing and infantilizing. The revised definition of dignity takings produced in response to this symposium will account for this very valuable observation.…”

“…As one South African so vividly put it, “I was a toothless citizen” (Atuahene 2014a, 45). In this symposium, we learn of others who had no choice, namely, African Americans whose property was destroyed and confiscated as a consequence of the Tulsa riot (Brophy 2016), members of the Hopi tribe who were deprived of their native lands and then decades later forced to endure the desecration of their sacred mountain (Richland 2016), Jews, Roma, and Sinti fleeced and exterminated by the Nazis during World War II (Veraart 2016), Bedouins forcibly removed from their native lands and prevented from living according to their nomadic customs (Kedar 2016), the Ikrit villagers summarily uprooted by the Israeli military (Kedar 2016), and Chinese peasants removed from their farms and made casualties of China's urban expansion (Pils 2016).…”

“…To further develop and refine the concepts of dignity takings and dignity restoration, symposium authors consider their application beyond the South African context. Case studies include: the separation of Hopi people from their sacred lands (Richland 2016); the requirement that all married women give their property to their husbands under the laws of coverture (Hartog 2016); the dispossession of Bedouins and Arab citizens in Israel (Kedar 2016); the looting, burning, and destruction of African American property during and after the 1921 Tulsa race riot (Brophy 2016); the property taken from Loyalists during the course of the American Revolution (Hulsebosch 2016); the forced evictions in China intended to create space for its rapidly expanding cities (Pils 2016); the use of racially restrictive covenants in the United States (Rose 2016); and the taking of Jewish property in France and the Netherlands during World War II (Veraart 2016). By testing the concepts of dignity takings and dignity restoration in a variety of cases, contributors are able to confirm, extend, or revise my original formulation of these concepts.…”