A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
Chinese Taobao Villages: Double Abstraction of Rural Communities and Historical Mediated Moment of Ultramodern Communes
According to Lefebvre’s theory, capitalism produces spatialities that concurrently sustain its existence and death. This paradox reflects the intrinsic contradictions of its mode of production and generates two opposing kinds of space, the abstract and the differential. The former reduces the concrete and diverse aspects of history and reality to an abstract system of symbols; the latter always escapes such reduction and reproduces itself as a revolutionary force, often residual, in everyday life. This paper addresses the implementation of this contradictory spatiality in rural China through a major public-private partnership development initiative, the Rural Taobao Programme, intensifying its effects on extended Chinese urbanity through the diffusion of digital e-commerce practices. We use the Lefebvrian concept of double abstraction to interpret the effects of this transformation by exploring its two-way spatial production: horizontal and vertical. The former concerns the uneven development processes based on the rhythm of capital accumulation, and the latter, regarding the assembly of different remnant pre-capitalist and modern modes of production. We submit that the Rural Taobao Programme development presents a distinctive reifying contradiction: while it engenders substantial differential growth through production redistribution, economic emancipation and social empowerment of rural collectives, it also creates a powerful abstractive apparatus for platform capital expansion through the entrepreneurialisation of ruralites that exacerbates its extractive capacity. By capturing the contradictions, the paper concludes by pointing to a possible future: an ultramodern commune that sublates history, where people gain power, communing capacity and hope.
Chinese Taobao Villages: Double Abstraction of Rural Communities and Historical Mediated Moment of Ultramodern Communes
According to Lefebvre’s theory, capitalism produces spatialities that concurrently sustain its existence and death. This paradox reflects the intrinsic contradictions of its mode of production and generates two opposing kinds of space, the abstract and the differential. The former reduces the concrete and diverse aspects of history and reality to an abstract system of symbols; the latter always escapes such reduction and reproduces itself as a revolutionary force, often residual, in everyday life. This paper addresses the implementation of this contradictory spatiality in rural China through a major public-private partnership development initiative, the Rural Taobao Programme, intensifying its effects on extended Chinese urbanity through the diffusion of digital e-commerce practices. We use the Lefebvrian concept of double abstraction to interpret the effects of this transformation by exploring its two-way spatial production: horizontal and vertical. The former concerns the uneven development processes based on the rhythm of capital accumulation, and the latter, regarding the assembly of different remnant pre-capitalist and modern modes of production. We submit that the Rural Taobao Programme development presents a distinctive reifying contradiction: while it engenders substantial differential growth through production redistribution, economic emancipation and social empowerment of rural collectives, it also creates a powerful abstractive apparatus for platform capital expansion through the entrepreneurialisation of ruralites that exacerbates its extractive capacity. By capturing the contradictions, the paper concludes by pointing to a possible future: an ultramodern commune that sublates history, where people gain power, communing capacity and hope.
Chinese Taobao Villages: Double Abstraction of Rural Communities and Historical Mediated Moment of Ultramodern Communes
Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering
Swasto, Deva Fosterharoldas (editor) / Rahmi, Dwita Hadi (editor) / Rahmawati, Yani (editor) / Hidayati, Isti (editor) / Al-Faraby, Jimly (editor) / Widita, Alyas (editor) / Sun, Ruyang (author) / Manfredini, Manfredo (author)
International Conference on Indonesian Architecture and Planning ; 2022 ; Yogyakarta, Indonesia
2023-06-27
22 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
The global village: the e-commerce networks of Taobao Villages
| British Library Online Contents | 2019