Speaker
Description
Since the turn of the millennium, “civic engagement” has been incorporated into the concept of innovation districts as a panacea for urban development problems, and the role of community in promoting the quality of place in innovation districts has been increasingly emphasized as a natural consequence of the tendency of national governmental institutions to decentralize responsibilities to local actors（Baiocchi & Ganuza, 2017;Walker, McQuarrie, & Lee, 2015）. However, more than two decades of mixed experimental results have shown that, so far, the neo-liberal discourse of “civic engagement” still leaves a huge gap between its practice and its reality, generating increasing inequalities, especially within the territory of the innovation districts. This study seeks to uncover the dynamics of this gap, and in this study, I will answer three interrelated questions: 1) what part of the population do “community” and “community citizenship” refer to in the discourse of the construction and operation of innovation districts? (2) How do community entrepreneurs utilize the social capital of innovation districts to occupy the ecological niche of the community and thus enjoy privileges? (3) Under what circumstances can “de facto” community citizens change the trajectory of innovation district development? This study is a qualitative research, using interviews and on-site participant observation to obtain data. The sociology of critique（Boltanski et al., 2014;Boltanski & Thevenot, 1999;Thevenot, 2002） provides a framework for studying participatory democracy that takes the critiques of actors (residents, market parties, governmental agencies) seriously, thus acknowledging their reflexivity. In this study, we chose an innovation district located in Yangpu District, Shanghai - the Knowledge Innovation Community (KIC) - as the study case. Based on recent field visits and 26 semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs, government staff, and ordinary residents of the community in the study area, three main arguments are put forward in this paper: 1) “community” in the innovation district discourse has a clear orientation towards community entrepreneurs; 2) the process of civic engagement rewards “entrepreneurial” behaviors and community entrepreneurs, and these citizens are often able to engage in the process through subcontracting, flexible and specialized services. are able to achieve their goals through tools such as subcontracting, flexible specialization and outsourcing, in other words, they have easier access to social capital and are able to use it more flexibly, which leads to the proliferation of social inequalities in the territory of innovation districts; 3) Despite the window of opportunity clearly leaning towards entrepreneurs, community residents were able to successfully unite to achieve local mobilization and ultimately resist the bandit logic of government and developers. They did this by delegitimizing developers and government officials and bringing development activities to a standstill. The research shows that even within community citizens, there is heterogeneity in social capital, participation opportunities, etc., and participation may be organized in a way that gives some citizens priority. In addition, city governments should establish structures and evaluate participation. Especially regarding the exclusion of residents in innovation districts.
References
Baiocchi, G., & Ganuza, E. (2020). Popular democracy: The paradox of participation. Stanford University Press.
Boltanski, L., & Thévenot, L. (1999). The sociology of critical capacity. European journal of social theory, 2(3), 359-377.
Stapper, E. W., & Duyvendak, J. W. (2020). Good residents, bad residents: How participatory processes in urban redevelopment privilege entrepreneurial citizens. Cities, 107, 102898.
Susen, S., & Turner, B. S. (Eds.). (2014). The spirit of Luc Boltanski: Essays on the ‘pragmatic sociology of critique’. Anthem Press.
Thévenot, L. (2002). Which road to follow? The moral complexity of an ‘equipped’humanity. Complexities: social studies of knowledge practices, 53-87.
Walker, E. T., McQuarrie, M., & Lee, C. W. (2015). Rising participation and declining democracy. Democratizing inequalities: Dilemmas of the new public participation, 3-23.
| Keywords | Innovation District；Civic Engagement；Inequality；Critical Sociology；Community |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
