Building the Chinese work unit: Modernity, scarcity, and space, 1949--2000

In the early period following the socialist revolution of 1949, architects and planners attempted to remake Chinese urban and rural settlements according to modern neighborhood design and planning principles. Yet the social development that transpired eventually rendered these attempts unsuccessful. The result was a torn landscape: a modern functional urban world consisting of work units (danwei)---the largely self-contained entities which integrated workplace, housing, and social services---was strictly separated from an underdeveloped rural world.;This dissertation examines the formation of the work unit as a specific urban form and its social implications for the making of Chinese modernity since 1949. Drawing from urban studies, critical theory, and environmental design history, the work is concerned with issues subsumed by spatial injustice, Chinese modernity, nation building, and urban-rural conflict. Each topical chapter engages in a critical theme, including urban contradictions and the socialist production of space, modernity as utopia in commune design, the birth of the unit wall, and the changing everyday unit landscape.;Through a combination of historical research, visual analysis, interviewing, and participant observation, the research shows that the distinctive work unit space was more than a passive backdrop to social practices; rather, it was actively involved in the construction, reproduction, and transformation of the socialist order. The study debunks the prevailing assumption that the characteristic spatial configuration of the work unit was pre-planned. Instead, the dissertation proposes seeing the form as a result of gradual development, molded in the gap between the state's drive for maximum accumulation for industrialization, and individual work units' endeavor to provide basic living facilities for their members. By integrating the analysis of the built environment and social imaginings, this work contributes new theoretical insights into the intertwined relationship between modernity, scarcity, and space. The dissertation argues that while the nation's identification with modernity provided the education of desire, the historically constituted condition of scarcity limited the possibility of actual fulfillment. In the context of Chinese socialism, the complex and often conflicting relationship between modernity and scarcity created specific spatial strategies, which eventually gave rise to the peculiar form of the work unit.