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作者

Xiaoyi Sun;Ronggui Huang

来源

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS,Vol.42,Issue2,P.257-277

语言

英文

关键字

作者单位

Fudan University

摘要

Urban space plays an important role in shaping the meaning-making process in relation to urban activism, especially for disorganized, spontaneous, and short-lived protests occurring in authoritarian regimes. Taking protests against locally unwanted land use (LULU) projects as an example, this article examines how urban space shapes the meaning-making process in relation to 2 anti-paraxylene (PX) protests in Kunming and Maoming. Particular attention is paid to how residents’ interpretations of the hazards of PX shaped the meaning-making process on social media. In the case of Kunming, a city with a long history of natural environmental conservation, the primary frame employed by residents was environment and health risks. In the case of Maoming, a large petrochemical industrial center with severe air pollution, residents expressed their opposition toward the PX project by emphasizing strong distrust in local government. Participants’ differentiated meaning-making processes were shaped by the dual space of cities, namely physical conditions and associated meanings and place-bounded historical memories of daily life. This article contributes to the scholarship on cities and social movements by integrating the theories of space/place and the theory of framing to analyze the spatial meaning-making process in relation to urban activism in China and in transitional economies in general.Additional informationAuthor informationXiaoyi SunXiaoyi Sun is Assistant Professor in the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University. Her research interests include environmental politics, urban governance, and state–society relations in urban China.Ronggui HuangRonggui Huang is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Fudan University. His research interests include urban sociology, digital sociology, and social movements.FundingThis study is partially supported by the Shanghai Social Science Foundation (2017EZZ002),Chinese National Social Science Foundation (12CSH043), the School of Social Development and Public Policy's Research Fund at Fudan University.AcknowledgmentsThe authors thank Professor Yip Ngai-ming and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.