Social Capital, Place Attachment and Civic Engagement in Reform-Era Urban China

• In Event: 1451 - Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 7. Issues in China and Taiwan

Abstract

To date, much of the scholarship on neighborhood activism has been informed by two research traditions: the social-capital approach and the community-psychology approach. Drawing on a community-based survey in Guangzhou, China, this study synthesizes these two approaches to analyze the perplexing rise of neighborhood activism in a country with traditionally low levels of civic participation. By distinguishing homeowners-associational engagement and contentious engagement from other types of engagement, the general notion of civic engagement is broken down into heterogeneous participatory behaviors and investigated against the backdrop of social-capital theories, place making, and urban transformation. By articulating the differential effects of sociodemographic, relational, and psychospatial measures on specific forms of civic engagement, this study further argues that our understanding of civic engagement cannot be decontextualized from its sociospatial embeddedness.

Author

• Qiang Fu, The University of British Columbia