International Social Science Journal (Chinese Edition)

No.1, 2019

Activists in old neighbourhoods: the case of BS Neighbourhood in the Dashilar Sub-district (Abstract)

Wang Hai’yu

Since the beginning of the reform, heterogeneity and diversity arisen from mobility and restructuring have created many new landscapes in Chinese urban areas today. Community has become an important unit for grassroot governance in urban areas. Activists in neighbourhoods, as capillaries of grassroot governance, also have a new image. The logic for their action can no longer be explained with such theories as “political identification”, “resources dependency” or “social compensation.” Through a ethnographic investigation into the BS neighbourhood in the Dashilar Sub-district, the author identifies and classifies the motives of the activists’ participation in old neighbourhoods as: 1) occupational habitus; 2) aspiration for happiness; 3) supports from family; 4) to fill in leisure time.