Poaching State Politics in Socialist China

Uxin Ju's Grassland Campaign, 1958-1966

Bibliographic Data

ID4488381
AuthorsHong Jiang (0000-0002-9299-5484, corresponding author)
Year2006
Volume96
Issue4
Pages633-656
Publication date2006-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeographical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0016-7428 • E-ISSN: 1931-0846
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1931-0846.2006.tb00520.x
OpenAlexW2030129751
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited51

This study explores the local experience of a state‐initiated campaign to improve the grassland in Uxin Ju, a Mongolian community in northern China, from 1958 to 1966. The contrast between the local experience and the official representation reveals great discrepancies and attests to the ability of local people to utilize state policies to meet local needs, transforming socialist ideologies into local rationales. Applying Michel de Certeau's theory of everyday practice that sees book reading as poaching and the use/consumption of political and cultural discourses as a process of creative empowerment, I examine how the Mongols in Uxin Ju "poached" state politics to their own advantages and appropriated the grassland campaign in the making of the local landscape. This poaching further elucidates James Scott's concept of ideological resistance by focusing on the creative use of nonoppositional nature, which is an important way in which local people could express their agency in the oppressive regime of socialist China. This article calls attention to how nonsubversive co‐optation of state policies can function as an expression of agency in the making of local human‐environmental history, even on the part of individuals who are actively accommodating to the ideology of the dominant regime.Chinagrassland campaignInner MongoliaMongolsstate policiesUxin Ju Additional informationNotes on contributorsHong JiangDr. Jiang is an assistant professor of geography at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822

Agency (philosophy · China · Ideology · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Resistance (ecology · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Chinese history and philosophy · Ecology · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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