Of scale and discourse: China’s ecological civilization and the struggle for development in Anshun

ABSTRACT

This paper elucidates an analytical framework of the material-discursive nature of scalar struggles by interrogating how the leaders of the Chinese city of Anshun responded to their central government’s vision of building an ecological civilization. While they invoked some scales to articulate the city’s environmental commitment and leadership, thereby unlocking political advantages associated with ecological civilization construction, they prioritized other scales to justify expanding the city’s economy despite its fragile environment. To distinguish the diverse ways discourses contributed to a multi-scalar fix of Anshun’s development, this paper underscores two material aspects of scalar discourses. First, for its purpose of engagement with scale, each scalar discourse invokes a particular framing function of scale: as level of regulation, scope of analysis, or horizon of political mobilization. Second, for its strategy of engagement with scale, each scalar discourse engages differently with the inherent scalar institutions and practices, from preserving to challenging them.

KEYWORDS:

• Scalar politics
• discourse
• urban sustainability
• ecological civilization
• China

Acknowledgements

Ethics approval for this work was received from the Survey and Behavioral Research Ethics Committee, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (ref. T16116416). Constructive comments from the two anonymous reviewers on earlier drafts of this article are much appreciated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We thank one of this paper’s reviewers for suggesting this point.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the General Research Fund of Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee [grant number CUHK14637516] and Faculty of Social Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong [grant number 4052166].