Moral Economy, Liquid Control and Broken Tacit Agreement: A Situational Action Perspective on Chengguan Violence in China

• In Event: Policing the Working Poor, Street Vendors, and Homeless Drug Users – Would a Diverse Force Matter?

Abstract

Chengguan (urban management staff) violence has been widely reported in China. Based on extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews with chengguan and street vendors, this research aims to explore micro-situational factors in shaping chengguan violence towards street vendors in Guangzhou. We argue that due to the nature of moral economy of street vending, local government adopts a strategy of a five-dimensional liquid control: liquid temporal control, liquid spatial control, liquid target control, liquid issue control, and liquid punishment. As a result of liquid control, a tacit agreement between chengguan and street vendors has been achieved, which can explain over 99 per cent of time there will be no violence during the interaction between chengguan and street vendors. We argue that chengguan violence tends to occur when the tacit agreement is broken. Factors in shaping the broken of the tacit agreement will further be examined in the research.

Authors

• Jianhua Xu, University of Macau

• Anli Jiang, University of Macau