RESEARCH ON PRODUCTION OF INFORMAL SPACE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE: A CASE STUDY OF KONGPU DISTRICT IN NINGBO
YE Dan1, ZHANG Jing-xiang2
1. School of Geographic and Oceanographic Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China;
2. School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
Abstract Since the 1970 s, with the governments of the developing countries adopted neoliberal reforms, especially a series of radical or revanchist spatial development strategies, the contradiction between the authorities and the disadvantaged groups became violent which always cause everyday resistance from those disadvantages. This paper aims to analyze the evolution of the informal space in China which hold a growth supremacism tendency under the influence of neo-liberalism and how the disadvantages reshape the informal space under the spatial discipline followed with the neoliberalism. Based upon Michel de Certeau's perspective of practice of everyday life and Henry Lefebvre's theory of the production of space, the analysis is conducted within a "strategy/tactic-space production" analytical framework. We explain the process of the production of informal space by analyzing the "discipline-resist" spatial practice between the authorities and the disadvantaged groups, especially those floating people and land-lost farmers. The result comes to that the dominance, suppression and discipline imposed on everyday life together with the resistance from everyday life constitute to the core mechanism of the production of informal space. The result also shows that nowadays under the "Growth Supremacism" developmental pattern in China, local governments become the main informal space shaper, while the disadvantaged people who are solidified within this kind of informal space reshape the space through the practice of everyday life in order to survive, which intensifies the informalisation of the informal space.
2015, Vol. 30 
