Everyday geographies of market transition

Agro‐science, socio‐technical relations, and the contingencies of market making in peri‐urban Lhasa, Tibet

Bibliographic Data

ID8962872
AuthorsJ Qian (0000-0001-9638-3808, Department of Geography The University of Hong Kong Hong Kong Hong Kong, corresponding author), Han Zhang (0000-0002-5265-7659, Department of Geography The University of Hong Kong Hong Kong Hong Kong), Yajing Liu (0000-0002-5323-8077, Department of Tourism Management Tibet University Lhasa Lhasa China, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume48
Issue3
Pages634-649
Publication date2023-03-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTransactions of the Institute of British Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-2754 • E-ISSN: 1475-5661
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/tran.12612
OpenAlexW4327699241
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited57

State‐promoted and market‐oriented horticultural production has fundamentally reshaped land use and agricultural economy in peri‐urban Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Region, China. This paper examines two scenarios amidst this transformation. In the first, peri‐urban land has been valorised for vegetable production through the erection of greenhouses and the introduction of agronomic science. However, Tibetans refrain from participating directly, preferring to lease the land to Han migrants, and citing structural inequalities between Han and Tibetans and Tibetan work ethic as explanation. In the second, the municipal government is more proactive in introducing agro‐science and providing technical training to enrol Tibetans. However, the participation of Tibetans is selective and partial, contingent on the same non‐market rationalities that Tibetans invoke to justify non‐participation in the first scenario. This paper explicates the diverging modes of participation for Tibetans by engaging with the Callonian approach on economisation and marketisation, and interrogating how socio‐technical relations established among humans, material infrastructure and agro‐science culminate in variegated calculative and non‐calculative agencies. Focusing in particular on the structural relations and cultural conventions that frustrate the unilinear enactment of a market order, this study contributes to the geographies of marketisation in two ways. First, it works with an analytical framework centred on the ongoing dynamic of framing, overflowing and reframing to argue that the marketisation approach can be expanded to account for the encounters between market agencements and local socio‐cultural contingencies. Geographically, second, it also contributes to the agenda of interrogating diverse market variants and the richness of economic differences in real space‐times

China · Cognitive reframing · Economic geography · Economics · Economy · Framing (construction · Geography · Lease · Political science · Politics · Relations of production · Sociology · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Law · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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