Between promises and uncertainties: an anthropological study of a city thoroughfare A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2016 Ximin Zhou Social Anthropology | School of Social Sciences Table of Contents List of figures .................................................................................................................................... 5 Abstract .............................................................................................................................................. 6 Declaration ....................................................................................................................................... 7 Copyright statement ...................................................................................................................... 7 A note on language and the Chinese administrative division ......................................... 8 Abbreviations .................................................................................................................................. 9 Glossary ............................................................................................................................................. 9 Chronology ..................................................................................................................................... 11 Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................... 12 Preface ............................................................................................................................................. 13 Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 16 Historical context: the road to reform ............................................................................................ 17 Exploring the idea of infrastructure ................................................................................................ 23 Infrastructure and modernity ........................................................................................................... 26 Research Outline .................................................................................................................................... 32 Positionality and the field ................................................................................................................... 34 Chapter outline ....................................................................................................................................... 35 Chapter 1: Historical accounts of the road .......................................................................... 42 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 42 The road imagined through the state-orchestrated history ................................................... 44 Finding history ....................................................................................................................................................... 44 The city image: stories of the revolutionaries and progressives ..................................................... 46 A collective public vs. multiple publics .......................................................................................... 51 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................ 56 Chapter 2: A road according to plans .................................................................................... 58 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 58 Neighbourhood profiles ....................................................................................................................... 59 Luohu District: where the journey begins .................................................................................................. 62 Futian District: the domination of planning .............................................................................................. 69 Nanshan District – where does the future(s) lie(s)? .............................................................................. 75 2 Disconnections and inequality .......................................................................................................... 77 Urban villages ......................................................................................................................................................... 78 Regeneration of redevelopments ................................................................................................................... 81 Conclusion: future(s) reconsidered ................................................................................................. 82 Chapter 3: On ways of walking and researching the road ............................................. 87 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 87 Walking guided by maps ..................................................................................................................... 89 The practice of dérive ........................................................................................................................... 91 Walking with others .............................................................................................................................. 98 Nodes: pause-and-observe ............................................................................................................... 102 Non-place and the figure of stranger ............................................................................................ 106 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 108 Chapter 4: Seeing, image making and visual conversations ....................................... 110 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 110 Up, down, and up again: the road and the city from different points of view ................. 111 With a camera ...................................................................................................................................... 113 Visual production and outcomes ................................................................................................... 115 Of the notions of the visual .............................................................................................................. 118 Break .............................................................................................................................................. 122 Chapter 5: Spatial stories of negotiating presence on the road ................................. 123 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 123 Site Portraits ......................................................................................................................................... 124 Fixedness and mobility ..................................................................................................................... 128 Regulation of space and people ..................................................................................................... 131 Social selectiveness of infrastructure vs. strategic ‘invisibility’ ......................................... 136 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 138 Chapter 6: The promise for speed and progress, compromised ............................... 139 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 139 The road as a moral space ................................................................................................................ 142 Discipline and control ...................................................................................................................................... 142 The challenge of the individual bodies ..................................................................................................... 144 The road and the delivery of speed and progress ................................................................... 149 “Time and money; efficiency is life” ........................................................................................................... 150 Traffic, when and where social differences become manifest ........................................................ 154 3 Traffic, when and where people wait together ..................................................................................... 158 Space of exceptions ............................................................................................................................ 161 Conclusion 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