Making Pastoral Settlement Visible in China. (21st October 2007)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zukosky, Michael L.
• Is Part Of: Nomadic peoples. Volume 11:Number 2(2007)
• Page Start: 107
• Page End: 133
• Publication Date: 2007-10-21
• Subjects: PHENOMENOLOGY -- NOMADS -- GOVERNMENT -- SETTLEMENT -- CHINA; Nomads -- Periodicals; 305.90691
• DOI: 10.3167/np.2007.110206
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0822-7942

Abstract

Abstract : Seen in the built environment of village and towns, the plans of scientific texts and journals of modern animal husbandry, and in the programmes of state natural resource bureaucracies and international development projects, settlements constructed for nomadic peoples in China seem to index a historically and socially specific vision associated with modern political economic ideologies. Drawing on the work of James Scott (1996), one might argue that settlement is the vision of the Chinese state. Yet Scott's approach risks objectifying the embodied vision of the humans who constitute settlement. Indeed, many scholars have simplified the agency attributed to a range of actors within the experience of settlement. This article uses a phenomenological approach to make more complex our understandings of these phenomena by exploring perceptions of settlement among three distinct actors: officials from the Chinese states, personnel of international organizations which have funded and provided technical expertise in the implementation of settlements, and residents of settlements themselves – Chinese ethnic minority citizens. In conclusion, I offer three different but overlapping visions that make settlement as a totality possible, and yet distinct from an objectified vision of Chinese government officials.