The Spatial Practice Of Floating Population And The Reproduction Of Consumption Space From Perspective Of Structuration Theory

Since the 1990s,the social differentiation and exclusion in China's urban public spaces had been intensified.Due to the deficiency of capital and ability,floating population in the bottom of society can't get into mainstream consumption space.Under this background,the informal market space represented by street markets and open-air markets is now becoming the important space supporter for floating population to do business and consume in cities.With China's urbanization,the formation and transition of informal market space,on the one hand highlights the active practice of floating population to reshape urban space,it also reveals the expediency of floating population's living tactics,and the restricted situation they have to face when striving for space right.As the study of floating population being constant to deepen,some scholars no longer portrayed floating population as passive and powerless sojourners who are exploited by global capitalist production,constrained by the household registration system and trapped in the lowest tier of the urban labour and housing market,they begin to consider the agency and everyday practice of floating population,the resources that they hold,and the strategies that they use to negotiate various institutional,social and cultural constraints.Yet most of these studies are defective for the heavy emphasis on the opposition between social structure and human agency,then ignored the dialectical relationship between them.Thus structuration theory is applied to this study,and taking Nanjing Andemen market as the case,the author observes and interviews the daily lives and behaviors of nonnative merchants in market and rural-immigrant workers-the main consumers to analyse the formation and transition of Andemen market,and reflect the interaction between floating population and informal market,as well as its inherent logical relationship.Based on the structuration theory,this paper adopted the interaction framework of agency and space proposed by Tabea Bork-Hiiffer.This framework regards the practice of space as a bridge between agency and structure,and the practice of space of floating population can be profiled by three dimensions:the reproduction of power geometries,the reproduction of space,and the reproduction of agency.These three procedures eventually lead to a approach about the duality of structure.The conclusions are:first,the power geometries of market space are constructed by floating population,government and local interest groups.In the face of other's power compression and harness,floating population seek for space right by the practice of space.Second,in the reproduction of space,the establishment of supply and demand relations between nonnative merchants and rural-immigrant workers changed the characters of Andemen market.At the same time,floating population sustain and expand the ties in work,natives and relatives by the activities in the market,then create multiple social and cultural significance.Third,the reproduction of agency reveals that the spatial features of the market not only meet the daily life style of rural-immigrant workers,but also provide facilities for nonnative merchants to do business.However,the market after reproduction also constraints the daily practice of floating population.Through the analysis of the above three aspects,this paper conclude that the duality of structure constitutes the internal mechanism of mutual construction between floating population and market space,it reflected on two aspects:the duality of urban development force and the duality of market space.The whole thesis contains about 46 000 words,30 pictures and charts.