Redai dili (Mar 2024)
Regionalization of Grassroots Governance and Differences in Class Life Politics: A Case Study of the A Town Industrial Park in Zhuhai
Abstract
With rapid urbanization, the formation of a governance model for spatial stock has become challenging in building a modern governance system. The process of "domainization" in spatial stock constantly affects the biopolitics of different groups during marketization. This paper introduces the perspective of Foucault's biopolitics based on the domain theory and constructs a domain politics framework indicating a tripartite coupling and interaction among social capital, spatial relations, and life politics. Through semi-structured interviews with, and questionnaires administered to, ordinary workers, middle managers, and top directors, we investigate the changing patterns of workers' biopolitics in the "Territorialization" of grassroots governance. The findings show that the "domainization" process relative to industrial parks has gone through three periods: first, when the state strongly shaped the construction of order and the state economy; second, when the government retreated and capital advanced on a large scale; and third, when there was tripartite competition between the government, workers, and capital. The structures of social capital, spatial relations, and biopolitics experienced a dramatic shift during the succession process of the three periods. The economic attributes of industrial parks shape the various spatial relationships of life and production among workers, middle-level cadres, and top directors, causing differences in the accumulation of social capital for the different classes. The compartmentalization of the spatial field has resulted in a reduction in workers' public activities and the weakening of social capital accumulation. The life politics of workers shifted from self-directed ownership of the A town mechanical farm to early economic dependency, then to full dependency on the park. First, this study bridges the gap in the study of "domainization" in production fields and provides a geo-theoretical perspective for understanding how workers' biopolitics is driven by this process in the context of the transformation in economic production relations. Second, the phenomenon of authority transfer in "domainization" is proposed based on the theory of state-society relations. A detailed explanation of the occurrence of semi-centralized governance in modern society is provided herein. Finally, study findings provide theoretical support and case studies on how sphere politics in grassroots governance affects spatial production relations, achieving integration of the disciplines of politics and geography.
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