The Construction Of Protest Space

Starting from three threads of related theories, this article intends to make a profound discussion on a collective lawsuit in City B, which is the most influential urban movement that ever occurred since 1949.As an introduction, this article uses the residential space as a metaphor and argues the main point of this article: the protest space of urban movement also grows out of agency's active construction. Then with those three threads of related theories, there comes out two questions: why did it happen in the most politically-powerful part of the state as the most influential movement since 1949? How can it be possible to re-produce itself and sustain for 10 years under the party-state background?Focusing on these two questions, with 2-year half-open public forums, fieldwork and a questionnaire survey, this article addresses three points as following: first, the special power structure of City B provides the movement with potential resources, while the rapid nation-wild urbanization provides it with initial motivation .These explain why it occurred in the political center of the state. However, those power structure and initial motivation can't exactly transform into real opportunity space without agency's active construction, which is called"subjectivity"in this article. And last, the agency's"subjectivity"includes citizenship enouncement, life-world wisdom and legal mobilization strategy. The interaction among these three factors constitutes the movement micro foundation, during which the courage of citizen is essential.Last but not least, with the unfolding of the lawsuit, the movement itself becomes a society-produce-institution, producing citizen and citizenship. How shall the civil society be produced in current China? How will it influence the State-Society Relationship? Those are further points to start from.