Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Geographies of Forced Eviction pp 97–119Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

‘It Felt Like You Were at War’: State of Exception and Wounded Life in the Shanghai Expo-Induced Domicide

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

Abstract

This chapter offers a counter-narrative from people who were displaced by the Shanghai World Expo to debunk the myth that displacement and eviction is a good thing. Through the conceptual lens of state of exception, I unravel the production of legal abandonment during the Expo-induced displacement, which denies the residents rights to constitutional protection and human decency, and subjects them to multiple forms of violence in the name of necessity. The eviction crew were identified as crucial agents of exception whose arbitrary decisions obstructed displacees’ access to full citizenship. The targets of legal abandonment could be anyone, whereas the ‘insubordinate’ displacees who failed to prove submission in time were most vulnerable. The arbitrary exercise of sovereign power caused the displacees significant anxiety, fear and pain, of various intensity and duration, which, in turn, shaped their domicide experiences and coping strategies.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   89.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   89.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    There is no census data available to draw a definitive conclusion.

References

  • Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agamben, G. (2005). State of exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baptista, I. (2013). Practices of exception in urban governance: Reconfiguring power inside the state. Urban Studies, 50(1), 39–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boo, K. (2012). Behind the beautiful forevers. London: Portobello Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. (2000). Pascalian meditations. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brandstädter, S. (2011). The law cuts both ways: Rural legal activism and citizenship struggles in neosocialist China. Economy and Society, 40(2), 266–288.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Du, J. (Ed.). (2006). Fashengzai Pudong Shibo Dadongqian de Baige Gushi [One hundred stories of expo-induced Dongqian, in Chinese]. Shanghai: Shanghai Science and Technology Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dutton, M. R. (2005). Policing Chinese politics: A history. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Erie, M. S. (2012). Property rights, legal consciousness and the new media in China: The hard case of the ‘toughest nail-house in history”. China Information, 26(1), 35–59.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Garrett, B. (2014). Too big to jail: How prosecutors compromise with corporations. United States: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gray, N., & Porter, L. (2015). By any means necessary: Urban regeneration and the “state of exception” in Glasgow’s commonwealth games 2014. Antipode, 47(2), 380–400.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Green, L. B. (1999). Fear as a way of life: Mayan widows in rural Guatemala. New York: Columbia University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Herzfeld, M. (2009). Evicted from eternity: The restructuring of modern Rome. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ho, C. Y. (2013). Bargaining demolition in China: A practice of distrust. Critique of Anthropology, 33(4), 412–428.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hsing, Y.-T. (2010). The great urban transformation: Politics of land and property in China. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Jones, R. (2009). Agents of exception: Border security and the marginalization of Muslims in India. Environment and Planning D-Society & Space, 27(5), 879–897.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li, S. M., & Song, Y. L. (2009). Redevelopment, displacement, housing conditions, and residential satisfaction: A study of Shanghai. Environment and Planning A, 41(5), 1090–1108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lu, Q. (2005). Dui Shibo Dongqian de Sandian Ganwu [Three reflections on expo-induced Chaiqian]. Retrieved August 21, 2012, from https://www.OnlinePDF.pdfy.gov.cn/css/pdpub/upload/200509200918176484.doc

  • Nice, J. A. (2011). Poverty as an everyday state of exception. In S. Feldman, C. Geisler, & G. A. Mennon (Eds.), Accumulating insecurity: Violence and dispossession in the making of everyday life. Athens: The University of Geogia Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nielsen, K. (1991). Does a Marxian critical theory of society need a moral theory? Radical Philosophy, 59(Autumn), 21–26.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peerenboom, R. P. (2002). China’s long march toward rule of law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Pieke, F. N. (2009). The good communist: Elite training and state building in today’s China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Porteous, J. D., & Smith, S. E. (2001). Domicide: The global destruction of home. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Porter, L. (2009). Planning displacement: The real legacy of major sporting events. Planning Theory & Practice, 10(3), 395–397.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Potter, P. B. (1999). The Chinese legal system: Continuing commitment to the primacy of state power. China Quarterly, 159, 673–683.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pratt, G. (2005). Abandoned women and spaces of the exception. Antipode, 37(5), 1052–1078.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Qin, S. (2013). Shanghai gone: Domicide and defiance in a Chinese megacity. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sanchez, F., & Broudehoux, A.-M. (2013). Mega-events and urban regeneration in Rio de Janeiro: Planning in a state of emergency. International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development, 5(2), 132–153.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sargeson, S. (2013). Violence as development: Land expropriation and China’s urbanization. Journal of Peasant Studies, 40(6), 1063–1085.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schell, O., & Delury, J. (2013). Wealth and power: China’s long march to the twenty-first century. London: Little, Brown.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott, J. C. (1990). Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shanghai Pudong New District Expo-Induced Chaiqian Command Centre, Shanghai Pudon Construction Bureau and Shanghai Expo Affairs Coordination Office In Pudong. (2006). Pudong Shibo Dadongqian [The grand displacement in Pudong]. Shanghai: Shanghai Literature and Arts Publishing House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shin, H. B. (2013). The right to the city and critical reflections on China’s property rights activism. Antipode, 45(5), 1167–1189.

    Google Scholar 

  • Swyngedouw, E., Mouleart, F., & Rodriguez, A. (2002). Neoliberal urbanization in Europe: Large-scale urban development projects and the New Urban Policy. Antipode, 34(3), 542–577.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tilly, C. (2003). The politics of collective violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Tyler, I. (2013). Revolting subjects: Social abjection and resistance in neoliberal Britain. London: Zed Books.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Wacquant, L. (2008). Urban outcasts: A comparative sociology of advanced marginality. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wacquant, L. (2009). Punishing the poor: The neoliberal government of social insecurity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Weinstein, L., & Ren, X. F. (2009). The changing right to the city: Urban renewal and housing rights in globalizing Shanghai and Mumbai. City & Community, 8(4), 407–432.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wu, F. (2004). Residential relocation under market-oriented redevelopment: The process and outcomes in urban China. Geoforum, 35(4), 453–470.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, S. (1998). A state-led nationalism: The patriotic education campaign in post-Tiananmen China. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 31(3), 287–302.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhu, J. N. (2012). The shadow of the skyscrapers: Real estate corruption in China. Journal of Contemporary China, 21(74), 243–260.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Geography and Tourism, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200E Heverlee 3001, Leuven, Belgium

    Yunpeng Zhang

Authors
  1. Yunpeng Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, Surrey, UK

    Katherine Brickell

  2. Institute for Social Futures, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

    Melissa Fernández Arrigoitia

  3. School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Alexander Vasudevan

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Zhang, Y. (2017). ‘It Felt Like You Were at War’: State of Exception and Wounded Life in the Shanghai Expo-Induced Domicide. In: Brickell, K., Fernández Arrigoitia, M., Vasudevan, A. (eds) Geographies of Forced Eviction. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51127-0_5

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51127-0_5

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-51126-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-51127-0

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation