Construction Of The Housing Market And The Homeowner Society

Since the end of 1970s, Deng Xiaoping, then the leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC), has initialed the reform of the planned economy. Its major objective is to rebuild the market in a socialism regime in order to modernize the country. In this context, the market has become a depoliticized tool while urbanization is seen as the symbol of modernization. In the past three decades, the job market has freed the labour force, and the population flow towards the big cities. Meanwhile, the housing market has become the major means for the "production of space" in urban China. Instead of small cities, metropolitan cities like Shanghai have becomes the model of Chinese urbanization. For sociologists, since Shanghai leads social changes, it is the ideal field to "search for the society" in the market environment built by the state.This dissertation employs home ownership to measure the impact of the housing market on the construction of society. The first part addresses the paths to three types of housing property:property of commodity housing, property of repurchased public housing and the mixed property of the indemnificatory housing. For each of them, I consider the institutional framework, the process of housing production, pricing, and target population. Divided by residential and professional statuses, people are oriented to a certain type of property. With different paths, homeowners have different perceptions of their property, though they are all mobilized into the housing market.To study the impact of homeownership on the solidarity among owners, I have selected several sites, including a "gated community" in the inner-city for the elderlies, and another in the suburb inhabited by the younger population. Analysis of homeowner neighbourhoods reveals that since the gated community has more clearly defined boundary, it favours the emergence of a neighborhood among homeowners with the same property type. Then analysis of the formal organization and collective action of owners reveals that within the social setting required by the state, neighbours can shape a formal organization like the homeowners’association. It is then possible to make the transition from participation in property management to the local political election. Hence, there is a horizontal solidarity among homeowners of the same status. They can resolve internal conflicts and mobilize for collective actions However, in case of a struggle against the power from a higher level, there would be a vertical fragmentation. It is difficult for owners with different properties to unite. In addition, homeowners with the same type of property can also be divided according to the various paths of house purchase.Furthermore, I find that neither the "market society" proposed by Polanyi, nor the "civil society" in the context of TH Marshall is insightfully enough. My research informs us of the emergence of a "homeowner society", a solidarity based on the status of homeownership. It has the awareness and ability to produce a social order. However, this solidarity is fragile, limited by the categorization of the state. In fact, homeowners defend the stability of a status granted by the State instead of a universal "right" existing outside of government categorization. In this sense, the ownership society corresponds to an auto-control instead of the autonomy.At the beginning of the reform, the labor market produced new social groups outside the direct control of the party-state. However, the state returned these social groups in control through homeownership, State power and its social control have thus moved from the work unit to the residential community. The housing market is in fact a tool of control allowing the state to exercise its governance on Chinese urban society.