Place,Memory And Identity:Constructing The Hankow Concession

Space and Place is one of the most widely discussed and reflected topics in nowadays academic world.Ever since scholars such as Lefebvre,Foucault,de Certeau began to question the traditional definition of space and place,its concept has been improved and expanded dramatically in the recent 30 years."Space and place" is nowadays regarded not only as objective physical locations,but also as historical,contextual and sociocultural processes.The thesis utilizes the anthropology of space and place as the theoretical tool to explore the spatial forms of Hankow Concession district and the local memory and identity behind these forms.On the one hand,the thesis tries to present the production,transformation and reproduction process of a specific historical and cultural space:the Hankow Concession district so as to analyze different political,economical,cultural and cognitive modes behind it.On the other hand,the thesis discusses how the place memories of the Hankow Concession are employed,expressed and rewritten by distinctive social groups such as the government,the cultural elites and the common citizens,serving as "social cement"for communities and heteroglossia cultural texts for local and national identity.Part Ⅰ（Chapter 1）of the passage is the introductory part.This chapter moves from a delineation of the research background of Chinese Concession studies（especially that of the Hankow Concession studies）to an overview of the current theoretical approaches to the topic of place memory and identity.The author also tries to demonstrate the feasibility of applying the theoretical framework of anthropology of space and place to the fieldwork site of hankow Concession in this chapter.Part Ⅱ of the thesis consists of two parts:Chapter 2 and Chapter 3.While Chapter 2 gives an overview of the history of Hankow Concession by presenting how it was produced expanded and competed over historically before 1949,chapter 3 explores how the spatial forms are reshaped by events after the establishment of People’s Republic of China,such as the struggles against the "three evils" and the"five evils",the cultural revolution and the cultural heritage movement in the new era.The author holds the point that the establishment of the concession district was the result of the expansion of capitalist world system and the permeation of national political power to local districts such as Hankow.The spatial arrangement and boundaries were practically a visual manifestation of the social hierarchy in which the interest and power of western colonists and capitalists were maintained and contested.After the founding of PRC,the concession district became occupied,remolded and reinterpreted by other historical discourses such as discourses about socialist transformation,class struggle,cultural heritage evaluation and protection;as a result,its spatial form was shaped and reset constantly by economical,political and ideological factors in different historical contexts.Part Ⅲ consists of Chapter 4 and Chapter 5,which analyzes the construction of place memory from a synchronical angle,using primarily the theoretical apparatus of construction theory of space.This part uses two typical examples（the "Slow life Zone of Russian Concession" and the Hankow Customs Museum）to illustrate how distinct social groups reconstruct and imagine the space of Hankow Concession.The author believes that there are three main forces dominating the fabrication of the place memory of Hankow Concession:the cultural elites,the merchants and the government.While the cultural elites and consumerism manage to construct the Hankow Concession as nostalgia place and artistic space for the Wuhanese in their narratives,the official discourse integrates the memory of the concession strategically into local and national identity,by describing it as the organic constitute of modernization.However,the place memory written by dominant groups fails to include the real life of the residents who live inside the old buildings;moreover,the individualized and embodied place memories of the folk people are usually neglected by those macro narratives.Part Ⅳ consists of the last chapter,which talks about the establishment,prosperity,declination,disappearance and rebirth of the British Hankow Icework of Hankow French Concession.By revealing the history and place memory of this famous foreign company,the author aims at exploring the identity construction of western colonists and their descendents.The author alternatively presents the place memory of the westerners and the local residents in order to discuss the interactive relationship and interdependence of the "east" and the"west",the "self’ and the"other1".The author believes that in a field of diversity and hybridity such as Hankow Concession,the identity of the "self’ and the "other" or the "east" and the "west" are usually intertwined and mutually transformational.