The Space Production And Consumption Of Ancient Villages

Along with the advent of consumer society, the concept of consumer culture permeates nearly all the aspects of social life, and everything is susceptible of becoming an object of consumption. Space, the site for human activities and practices, now presents the characteristics of commercialization. The ancient villages gradually become the place for tourism and consumption because of their traditional space landscape. Driven by the consumer culture, the space features and transition mechanism of these ancient villages come to change. According to Neo-Marxist space theory, the organization and reconstruction of space is essentially the product of social change.In view of this perspective and based on Neo-Marxist space theory, this paper tries to establish an analytical framework on the evolution of space features and transition mechanisms in order to analyze the evolution of space features and transition mechanisms of ancient villages during the process of local tourism development. Combined with the real case study of Luxiang Village of Suzhou, this paper elaborates on the evolutional characteristics of ancient villages, analyzes the social-spatial effects in the process of space production in ancient villages, and puts forward some strategies to optimize space production.For the first part, this paper analyzes the changes of space production, consumption characteristics and also their relations under the background of social transition from “production society” to “consumer society”,In the second place, this paper tries to establish an analytical framework on the evolution of space features and transition mechanisms during the process of tourism development from the aspects of space production and consumption logics. The analysis of space forming mechanism of ancient focuses on the main body of production, the media of production and the mode of production; while the analysis of space consumption is mainly about the main body of consumption, the consumption contents and consumption patterns.Thirdly, based on the empirical study of Luxiang Village, the paper analyzes and compares the space features and transition mechanisms of ancient villages in traditional period and consumer society, explains the mechanism of space formation and space features specifically driven by consumer culture. The conclusion includes:(1) In traditional period, clan organizations were the main body to construct the village, people relied on village regulations to maintain the order of the village, and local villagers were the main space consumers. This kind of space consumption was for the purpose to meet the needs of production and living;(2) In consumer society, the space production of Luxiang Village, led by the local government, is a process of replication and collage with clan culture as the media. Visitors gradually become the main body of space consumption. Ancient villages become thus the place for culture consumption. This kind of space consumption is characterized by meeting the demands of visitors’ visual perceptions and experience.Finally, this paper analyzes the positive and negative effects of the space production in Luxiang village, and then puts forward some strategies to optimize the space production in Luxiang Village.