Abstract

From the 1990s, China's urbane life has been experiencing a fierce change. With the development of diversification of economy and further disintegration of Danwei system, together with the course of furthering reform and functional changes of the enterprises and institutions, the basic community's structure is being involved in a disintegration-and-reintegration process. As a result, the landscape of community also changes. This change of landscape not only represents the adjustment of social relation, but also records and describes the living condi-tions of the people living there. The fact that landscape can somewhat reflect social life initiates my interest in exploring the relation between space and society. Therefore, this book tries to analyze the production of urban community space from spatial perspective, on the basis of on the survey in Yellow Crane Tower Street of Wuhan City, Hubei Province. And because space itself represents power structure, this book can also be regarded as an analysis of the production of power in the community.

The three main questions I try to answer in this book are: the first, the relation between social transformation and special urban spatial structure. The sec-ond, how does the spatial conception of urban power subject affect the community spatial structure? The third, what is the spatial mechanism of power?

To answer these questions, first of all, community must be put into the background of structural and social transformation, or even more extensive global timespace background. It must be investigated from the aspect of flow of economy. Next, to discuss the interaction of allocative resources and authoritative resources inside community, a power container, such things have to be taken into consideration: the moving logic of the resources, the space praxis of subjects, and the interaction of these two. In addition, the constructional differences and creating experimental facts during the community's spatial development are deserving of attention as well.

Around the three main questions, this book is divided into three parts.

The first part is introduction. The content includes: the origin and importance of social spatial perspective; literature review; the frame of the book.

Social spatial perspective is the ontology and epistemology emphasizing the unification of corporality, spirituality and sociality of space. This perspective focuses on the dual relation between society and space: on one hand, human have to behave in the space under the influence of social structure. On the other hand, human can represent their need and desire through produing and changing space.

To research community from this perspective is superior to its traditional counterpart in two points. Firstly, it compensates for the loss of community research from State-and-Society perspective. Secondly, it draws the influence of economy into the field of community research. The superiority of this perspective goes far beyond this. It provides an opportunity for varies of social theory to test their applicability in analyzing and resolving community problem through space.

The second part is the interpretation of the theory of“the production of space”. It begins with the analysis of the background, characteristics and importance of space turning of social theory. On the basis of the analysis, this book reinterprets space, and draws the conclusion. For ontology, space is represented during the course of creation and existence. It contains social relation, hides it as well. As for epistemology, space is natural, spiritual, and social; ‘space prax-is', ‘the representation of space' and ‘the space of representation' make up the une diaqlectiaue de triplicité. Following the conclusion above, I propose the research frame of this book. That is, to analyze the production of community from the points of economy, government and society.

The third part contains chapter three, four and five. According to the frame mentioned in part two, based on the survey, these three chapters analyze the production of community with the help of the une diaqlectiaue de triplicité of space from the aspect of economy, government and society.

Chapter three discourses how economy produces the space of community from three aspects: production, circulation and consumption. This chapter is mainly divided into two parts: the period of planned economy, and the period of the disintegration of nation, market and society. During the first period, economy was integrated into the logic of politics, thus it could only produce and reproduce its space in the fringe space, which refers to street office and neighborhood committee. During the second span, economy spins community space off from the space of Danwei by means of readjusting industrial structure, improving circulating environment and stimulating collective consumption. Consequently, the representa-tion of community space also changes.

Chapter four discourses how government produces the space of community. This chapter is also divided into two parts: the period of planned economy, and the period of reform. During the first part, the conception of omnipoteat government is represented in the space, thus the space of sub-district and community committee hides themselves into the representational space. During the second span, central government transforms at a different speed from their local counter-part. Therefore, government represents two suits of symbolic ordered structure. As subjects can choose the symbolic ordered structure that they more preferred, their praxis conflicts in the community. A new community order hence comes into be-ing.

Chapter five firstly makes it clear that which subjects belong to society on the basis of literature review and field work. Then, it analyzes the representation of space and the space of representation of the subjects. Next, it discourses how the subjects define themselves and their relation to others through praxis and how their praxis produces a real-and-imagined space.

The last part is the conclusion of main points of views of this book. It also indicates the possibility that how spatial theory will affect the community research in the future.

Key words: the production of space; community; power; space praxis; the representation of space; the space of representation/ representational space