‘Just Sustainability’ or Just Sustainability? Shanghai’s Failed Drive for Global Excellence

Abstract

A persistent challenge to deliver a socially just and ecologically sustainable development for emerging cities in non-Western countries is that legitimacy and effectiveness often hinge on the normalizing effect of international ‘models’ and ‘standards’ defined by the developed countries. In cases such as Shanghai’s latest urban sustainability programme, a fixation on excelling at ‘global indicators’ has led its promises of inclusive social progress astray. We argue this is not simply because Shanghai authorities didn’t ‘get’ just sustainability, but highlights a more rooted subaltern anxiety that constrains their perceptions on how their programmes should be identified and delivered. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theorization of how social agency’s ‘logic of practice’ is connected to their positions in the ‘field’, we investigate a shared epistemic deference among Shanghai experts and publics toward knowledge generated from international experiences. This has reproduced a marginalization of the subaltern public in the field of developing sustainable cities.

Keywords:

• Bourdieu
• field
• just sustainability
• Shanghai
• subaltern
• urbanization

Acknowledgements

We also wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The empirical work for this research was supported by the Leverhulme Trust [RP 2013-SL-015] and by Shandong University, funding number 61060089963026.