Gated communities, territoriality and the politics of the good life in (post-)socialist Shanghai

This dissertation examines the contested cultural geographies and the politics of place-making in Shanghai's gated communities. The study focuses on how the cultural reproduction of privileged groups in these fortified enclaves is deeply implicated in the territorial politics of exclusion and the formation of a highly exclusionary landscape. Central to the analysis are themes relating to the concept of territoriality, culture and space. Specifically, the dissertation demonstrates how the "new Chinese middle-class" in Shanghai draws upon a range of cultural resources (both discursive and material) to carve out their own "rightful" private territories while keeping out "less deserving others." In this sense, the territorial production/consumption of gated communities are invariably bound up in the cultural reproduction of middle-class landscape that is entrenched in a moral politics of "the good life" - defined in terms of a highly segregated and insular landscape maintained through the territorial defense of privileged lifestyle, private property, privacy and, ultimately, securing the "civilized" moral enclaves from disenfranchised masses of migrant workers and urban poor in the city. The study further argues that territoriality in gated communities is not only enforced through formal "hard" territorial tactics such as the construction of physical fortifications or legal boundaries but also operates at a more subtle and ideological level through the mobilization of a repertoire of symbols, values and rhetoric of the good life. The latter, as the dissertation contends, parallels the logic of hegemony such that class and social exclusion are refigured and depoliticized while the defense of luxury and privileges are simply recast as questions of "civilized" lifestyles and values. In the final analysis, the study addresses an overarching normative concern by examining how social-spatial differentiations and exclusion in Shanghai's gated communities potentially disrupt, challenge and unsettle the modern ideals of city life. By adopting a geographical moral perspective, this dissertation aims to tease out some of the moral complexities and ambiguities of place-making in Shanghai's gated communities.