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Street Politics: Street Vendors and Urban Governance in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2016

Amy Hanser
Amy Hanser*
Affiliation:
Department of sociology, University of British Columbia. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

Conflicts between urban street vendors and city regulators have become a common urban sight in Chinese cities today. This paper considers how visions of modern urban streets and sidewalks have helped to generate increasingly restrictive policies on street vending and spurred new forms of urban regulation and policing. While mostly an everyday routine of Chinese city life, the resulting vendor–chengguan conflicts dramatize state power in public and carry the latent danger of crowd violence in response. In particular, aggressive policing of highly visible city streets can at times produce a volatile “politics of the street” involving episodes of vendor resistance and even dramatic expressions of bystander solidarity which challenge these street-level expressions of state power.

摘要

在中国, 街头摊贩与城管之间的冲突已经司空见惯。本文探讨: 打造现代城市道路形象, 如何导致更加严格的摊贩管制政策, 促成新形式的城市规划和管理。虽然摊贩与城管冲突在中国城市生活中已经屡见不鲜, 但是这种冲突加剧了政府的公共权力, 带来了群众暴力反抗的潜在危险。特别是对那些最醒目的城市街道的强力管制有时候可能会引起动荡性的“街头政治”, 包括摆摊商贩抵触反抗, 甚至是夸张的旁观者团结, 挑战街道级别的行政权力。

Keywords

Chinastreet regulationstreet vendorschengguanurban governanceurban conflict中国道路管制街头摊贩城管城市管理城市冲突
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 226 , June 2016 , pp. 363 - 382
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Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2016 

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