Neighbors In Chinese Urban: From "Homeowner" To "Citizen"

After 1978, the economic reform has brought tremendous changes in urban forms and urban society in China. In the urban renewal based on market economy, the housing "production" and "distribution" (consumption) have changed radically. The housing reform makes "housing" transformed from "public resource" into "commodity". In this process, the private housing property is established by the legislation of many radical laws related to the property. Consequently, the "homeowner", as a new social category, is born in the reform of China.Meanwhile, in the political field, Chinese administration has been transforming from the "Unit system" (Danwei system) to the "Community(quarter) system". In the residential space, the "residents" have been empowered by many institutional supply related to the citizenship. The most important case is the direct vote for the "residents committee" in Shanghai.So we could see, the residential space becomes a confronting field with the establishment of housing property and the practice of citizenship.My basic problematic lies in the process from the economic reform to the political practice, that is how the "homeowner" becomes the "citizen". Despite of many latest researches focusing on the homeowners' collective actions based on the "homeowners' committee", I want to go deeper to observer the communication in the homeowner's day-to-day life: the neighborhood. There are 3 concrete problematic: 1 .what is foundation of the neighborhood in contemporary Chinese urban? 2.How does it shape and what is its structure? 3.How the neighborhood links to the citizen participation?Using the approach of urban anthropology, I have done a one-year field work in a "gated community" in the inner city of Shanghai. I find that, as for the neighborhood, its foundation is the identification of housing property based on the real estate brand; the bounding wall of the gated-community (property) is its spatial and mental borderline; its subject is the informal groups based on the shared public space. And the communication of the parallel generation makes the network of neighborhood. To go further, I have observed the process from the neighborhood to community participation, and finally the citizen participation. I find that the neighborhood is the base of citizen participation, and it can exist before the collective action.From the findings of my field work, I draw the following conclusions concerning with structural factors in urban society: 1. Gentrification, as the most prominent context of Chinese urban area, makes the rebirth of the "sensibility of the residential space (earth) "for the homeowners, which is the foundation of neighborhood. 2. The neighborhood of homeowners, rather then the "homeowners' committee", is the radical power for the citizen participation. 3. The "homeowner" becomes a new, concrete social category in China. They have gained their identity and status on legal system, economy and lifestyle. The "gated-community" is a spatial representation of their characters.