Catalyzed commoning
Boundary spanners and the politics of rural revitalization in China
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21720180 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yue Liao (0000-0003-2747-3513, Renmin University of China, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-22 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Ethnography (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1466-1381 • E-ISSN: 1741-2714 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/14661381261464313 |
| OpenAlex | W7165553563 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 25 |
Based on an ethnography of a northern Chinese village, this article examines how collective action emerges amid social atomization and state dominance. Focusing on an entrepreneurial Party Secretary who bridged state bureaucracy, market capital, and village society, I analyze how he mobilized resources to break the deadlock of underdevelopment. Yet this process generated a paradoxical “politics of revitalization”: while delivering economic benefits, the model relied on strongman authority and cultivated a “coalition of the capable” that marginalized resource-poor households. I theorize this dynamic as “catalyzed commoning”—a mode of collective resource management engineered from above by local elites rather than emerging organically from below. By situating these dynamics within the broader state-market nexus, I argue that catalyzed commoning, while effective, ultimately reinforces a form of state-guided entrepreneurial governance that prioritizes efficiency over equity, offering critical insights into the paradoxical nature of elite-driven development in China and beyond
Boundary (topology) · China · Collective action · Corporate governance · Deadlock · Embeddedness · Ethnography · Politics · Resource (disambiguation) · State (computer science) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
Rural China Takes Off
Neo-Endogenous Rural Development in the EU
Bridges, brokers and boundary spanners in collaborative networks
Governing the Commons
Commoning as a postcapitalist politics 1
Stayers in China's “hollowed‐out” villages
Modes of Governance in the Chinese Bureaucracy
Stigmatizing commoning
Conceptualising ‘neo-exogenous development’
Infrastructural Power Revisited
Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State (1977)
The Competent Boundary Spanner
The Tragedy of the Anticommons
Empowering Local Action through Neo-Endogenous Development; The Case of Leader in England
Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation
Political Optics and the Occlusion of Intimate Knowledge
Local Governments as Industrial Firms
Neo-socialist governmentality
Debating the rural cooperative movement in China, the past and the present
Brokers as Assemblers
Spatializing States
| Highly cited | No |
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