The social politics of dispossession: Informal institutions and land expropriation in China

Abstract

Extant studies on land dispossession often focus on its economic and extra-economic aspects, with respective emphasis on the operation of market mechanisms and the deployment of state-led coercion in bringing about the separation of households from their land. This article draws attention to the under-examined role of informal institutions in the politics of dispossession. Social organisations such as lineages and clans pervade grassroots societies and are central to land control and configurations of property rights. In China, the reconsolidation of lineages as shareholding corporations that develop real estate and operate land transfers has rendered them prominent actors in the politics of land and urbanisation. Drawing on an empirical case study, this article argues that informal institutions play a crucial role in mediating both the economic and extra-economic processes of dispossession. It further shows how, by providing the networks necessary for collective mobilisation and supplying the normative framework through which rightful shares in land are claimed, social organisations are at the same time instrumental in the organisation of anti-dispossession struggles. By unravelling the social dynamics that underlie land expropriation, this article offers a nuanced perspective to the politics of dispossession that goes beyond narratives of state-led coercion and market compulsion.

Restructuring the State: Policy Transition of Construction Land Supply in Urban and Rural China

“…By reviewing the policy change relating to construction land supply, the paper depicts a trajectory of institutional arrangements of state. In this trajectory, the state is rearticulating its profound status in regulating localities and regional development, just like the state remaking process in land politics of rural China by defining and defending the reach [73]. What is behind the trajectory is the fact that the urbanisation level in China has grown to 59.58% with an annual growth rate of 1% [3] and more than use rights of 90,000 mu rural construction land has been sold for commercial use (See The State Council's summary report on rural land expropriation reform, rural collective-owned commercial construction land reform, and rural residential land reform Available online: http://www.npc.gov.cn/npc/c12491/201812/3821 c5a89c4a4a9d8cd10e8e2653bdde.shtml, accessed on 18 December 2020).…”

Tilling another's land: Migrant farming under rural industrialization and urbanization in China

“…Less attention, in the meantime, has been given to how rural urbanization and the transition to land‐based accumulation impact dynamics of differentiation from below. Studies of land expropriation have examined how accumulation by dispossession refracts existing class and social structures (Chuang, 2015; Kan, 2020). By examining how accumulation by and without dispossession co‐produce differentiation in a community, this paper offers further insights into how distinct modes of surplus generation variably coopt and marginalize different groups within rural society.…”

“…Less attention, in the meantime, has been given to how rural urbanization and the transition to land-based accumulation impact dynamics of differentiation from below. Studies of land expropriation have examined how accumulation by dispossession refracts existing class and social structures (Chuang, 2015;Kan, 2020).…”

Elite capture and urban geography: Analyzing geographies of privilege

“…Examples of such elite captures of urban institutions abound, especially in places with high degrees of social privilege like highly gentrified neighborhoods or affluent suburbs. We see elite captures, for example, in the classed and racialized politics of exclusionary zoning in five US cities (Cashin, 2021); extreme engineering for luxury property development in London (Burrows et al, 2021), Jakarta (Liong et al, 2020), or Hong Kong (Ho and Yip, 2023); subversion of planning institutions by the real estate industry in Athens (Alexandri, 2018), New York (Stein, 2019), Hong Kong (Aveline-Dubac and Balndeau, 2019), and Toronto (Lippert, 2019); displacements for elite real estate development in Rio de Janeiro (Gaffney, 2016), Atlanta (Raymond et al, 2021), and Guangzhou (Kan, 2020); or the hyper-segregated enclaves of the super-rich across global cities in east and southeast Asia, the Gulf States, North America, and western Europe (Forrest et al, 2017).…”