When guesthouse meets home: The time-space of rural gentrification in southwest China. Issue 100 (March 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zhao, Yawei
• Is Part Of: Geoforum. Issue 100(2019)
• Page Start: 60
• Page End: 67
• Publication Date: 2019-03
• Subjects: Rural gentrification -- China -- Displacement -- Tourism -- Ethnic minority -- Lived experience; Geography -- Periodicals; Human geography -- Periodicals; Regional planning -- Periodicals; Sciences de la terre -- Périodiques; Géographie -- Périodiques; Géographie humaine -- Périodiques; Aménagement du territoire -- Périodiques; Earth sciences; Geography; Human geography; Regional planning; Periodicals; Electronic journals; 304.205
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.01.020
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0016-7185

Abstract

Highlights: Examines how gentrification could serve as an analytic lens for rural changes in China. Expands the analysis of 'marginalized' groups from the household level to the individual level. Calls for a lived-experience approach to capture the dynamics and complexities of the gentrification process. Adds evidence to the diversification and abstraction of displacement. Abstract: After decades of scholarship, gentrification as a concept has gone global, spreading to diverse geographic and socio-cultural contexts. Drawing upon discussion and debate about this concept, this paper seeks to explain how local villagers in Dali, in southwest China, have been engaged in bringing about 'gentrification.' I refer to gentrification in quotation marks because the process analyzed in this paper is not the same as the one typically written about in most of the gentrification literature, in the sense that some villagers are not displaced victims but 'assistant gentrifiers' actively pushing forward 'gentrification' in the countryside. This paper argues that, though the gentrification framework enables researchers to investigate the cause, outcome, and everyday character of a similar process in a non-western context, it has to be applied with caution, without overlooking contextual specificities and other processes that are mingled with gentrification. Besides noting the spatiality and temporality of the rural gentrification process, this paper expands the discussion of displacement by recognizing its variegated nature within a household and making it explicit that displacement is more than eviction from original housing and includes sociocultural impacts.