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“When It's Dark in the East, It's Light in the West”: Lifelong Venturing and Accelerated Temporality in Beijing's Urban Villages

“When It's Dark in the East, It's Light in the West”: Lifelong Venturing and Accelerated... For decades, Chinese rural migrants have been understood as engaging in dagong 打工 (working for a boss), or the selling of their waged labor, conditioned by the global production chain, dormitory regimes, and exploitive labor relations within and beyond factories. Meanwhile, chuangdang 闯荡 (venturing) as a life project that either opposes or extends dagong has been neglected in scholarly studies. Venturing refers to a spatiotemporal condition defined by the uniqueness of urban villages where rural migrants participate in the informal economy on the urban fringes and attach themselves to entrepreneurship and mobility. It is also a multifaceted presentism produced out of the following spatiotemporal conditions: (1) the sense of urgency to get ahead in spatial temporality; (2) an optimistic relationship with unpredictability; and (3) the technologies of mobility in the name of freedom. By highlighting the dilemmas that propel and hinder rural migrants, this article argues that the cultural politics of venturing are a condition that renders rural migrants economically aggressive, yet politically passive. Thereby, it not only prolongs rural migrants’ mobile lives on the urban fringes, but also dampens political actions that claim space through resistance. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png positions Duke University Press

“When It's Dark in the East, It's Light in the West”: Lifelong Venturing and Accelerated Temporality in Beijing's Urban Villages

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Copyright
Copyright 2022 by Duke University Press
ISSN
1067-9847
eISSN
1527-8271
DOI
10.1215/10679847-9723750
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Abstract

For decades, Chinese rural migrants have been understood as engaging in dagong 打工 (working for a boss), or the selling of their waged labor, conditioned by the global production chain, dormitory regimes, and exploitive labor relations within and beyond factories. Meanwhile, chuangdang 闯荡 (venturing) as a life project that either opposes or extends dagong has been neglected in scholarly studies. Venturing refers to a spatiotemporal condition defined by the uniqueness of urban villages where rural migrants participate in the informal economy on the urban fringes and attach themselves to entrepreneurship and mobility. It is also a multifaceted presentism produced out of the following spatiotemporal conditions: (1) the sense of urgency to get ahead in spatial temporality; (2) an optimistic relationship with unpredictability; and (3) the technologies of mobility in the name of freedom. By highlighting the dilemmas that propel and hinder rural migrants, this article argues that the cultural politics of venturing are a condition that renders rural migrants economically aggressive, yet politically passive. Thereby, it not only prolongs rural migrants’ mobile lives on the urban fringes, but also dampens political actions that claim space through resistance.

Journal

positions – Duke University Press

Published: Aug 1, 2022

References

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    Araghi, Farshad A.
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    Arrighi, Giovanni
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    Bach, Jonathan
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    Brenner, Robert
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    Démurger, Sylvie Xu, Hui
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    Driessen, Miriam
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    Florence, Eric
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    Graeber, David
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    Gray, Kevin
  • Precarization or Empowerment? Reflections on Recent Labor Unrest in China
    Lee, Ching Kwan
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    Leung, Parry So, Alvin Y.
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    Liang, Zai
  • China's Great Migration and the Prospects of a More Integrated Society
    Liang, Zai
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    Litzinger, Ralph Rojas, Carlos Litzinger, Ralph A.
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    Ma, Laurence J. C. Xiang, Biao
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    Massey, Jonathan Snyder, Brett
  • 2019 Migrant Workers Monitoring Survey Report
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    Perez, Miguel
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    Pun, Ngai Lu, Huilin
  • Putting Transnational Labor Process in Its Place: The Dormitory Labour Regime in Post-socialist China
    Pun, Ngai Smith, Chris
  • Grounding Displacement: Uncivil Urban Spaces in Postreform South China
    Siu, Helen
  • The Squatter Property Market in Hong Kong: Informal Regulation and the State
    Smart, Alan
  • Unruly Places: Urban Governance and the Persistence of Illegality in Hong Kong's Urban Squatter Areas
    Smart, Alan
  • The Floating Population in the Cities: Chances for Assimilation?
    Solinger, Dorothy Davis, Deborah Kraus, Richard Haughton, Barry Perry, Elizabeth L.
  • Willful Times: Unpredictability, Planning, and Presentism among Entrepreneurs in a Central Chinese City
    Steffen, Megan
  • The Hustle Economy: Informality, Uncertainty, and the Geographies of Getting By
    Thieme, Adeline Tatiana
  • Peasants, Peasantries, and (De)peasantization in the Capitalist World-System
    Vanhaute, Eric Babones, Salvatore Chase-Dunn, Christopher
  • Dramaturgies of Dissent: The Spatial Politics of Squatting in Berlin, 1968–
    Vasudevan, Alex
  • Producing Community: The MST and Land Reform Settlements in Brazil
    Wolford, Wendy
  • Land Development, Inequality, and Urban Villages in China
    Wu, Fulong
  • Rural Migrant Workers and China's Differential Citizenship: A Comparative Institutional Analysis
    Wu, Jieh-min King Whyte, Martin Adams, Jennifer
  • The Would-Be Migrant: Post-socialist Primitive Accumulation, Potential Transnational Mobility, and the Displacement of the Present in Northeast China
    Xiang, Biao
  • Hundreds of Millions in Suspension
    Xiang, Biao
  • Suspension: Seeking Agency for Change in the Hypermobile World
    Xiang, Biao
  • My Life Is Elsewhere: Social Exclusion and Rural Migrants’ Consumption of Homeownership in Contemporary China
    Zhan, Yang
  • The Urbanization of Rural Migrants and the Making of Urban Villages in Contemporary China
    Zhan, Yang
  • Forced from Home: Property Rights, Civic Activism, and the Politics of Relocation in China
    Zhang, Li
  • Ziyou (Freedom), Occupational Choice, and Labor: Bangbang in Chongqing, People's Republic of China
    Zhang, Xia
  • Hukou and Land: Market Reform and Rural Displacement in China
    Andreas, Joel Shaohua, Zhan
  • Global Depeasantization, 1945–1990
    Araghi, Farshad A.
  • Labor Supplies in Historical Perspective: A Study of Proletarianziation of the African Peasantry in Rhodesia
    Arrighi, Giovanni
  • Modernity and the Urban Imagination in Economic Zones
    Bach, Jonathan
  • The Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism
    Brenner, Robert
  • Return Migrants: The Rise of New Entrepreneurs in Rural China
    Démurger, Sylvie Xu, Hui
  • Migrating for the Bank: Housing and the Chinese Labor Migration to Ethiopia
    Driessen, Miriam
  • Struggling around Dagong: Discourses about and by Rural Migrant Workers in the Pearl River Delta
    Florence, Eric
  • On Playing by the Rules—The Strange Success of #OccupyWall Street
    Graeber, David
  • Labor and the State in China's Passive Revolution
    Gray, Kevin
  • Precarization or Empowerment? Reflections on Recent Labor Unrest in China
    Lee, Ching Kwan
  • The New Labor Contract Law in 2008: China's Legal Absorption of Labor Unrest
    Leung, Parry So, Alvin Y.
  • The Age of Migration in China
    Liang, Zai
  • China's Great Migration and the Prospects of a More Integrated Society
    Liang, Zai
  • Regimes of Exclusion and Inclusion: Migrant Labor, Education, and Contested Futurities
    Litzinger, Ralph Rojas, Carlos Litzinger, Ralph A.
  • Native Place, Migration, and the Emergence of Peasant Enclaves in Beijing
    Ma, Laurence J. C. Xiang, Biao
  • Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War
  • Occupying Wall Street: Places and Spaces of Political Action
    Massey, Jonathan Snyder, Brett
  • 2019 Migrant Workers Monitoring Survey Report
  • Toward a Life with Dignity: Housing Struggles and New Political Horizons in Urban Chile
    Perez, Miguel
  • Unfinished Proletarianization: Self, Anger, and Class Action among the Second Generation of Peasant-Workers in Present-Day China
    Pun, Ngai Lu, Huilin
  • Putting Transnational Labor Process in Its Place: The Dormitory Labour Regime in Post-socialist China
    Pun, Ngai Smith, Chris
  • Grounding Displacement: Uncivil Urban Spaces in Postreform South China
    Siu, Helen
  • The Squatter Property Market in Hong Kong: Informal Regulation and the State
    Smart, Alan
  • Unruly Places: Urban Governance and the Persistence of Illegality in Hong Kong's Urban Squatter Areas
    Smart, Alan
  • The Floating Population in the Cities: Chances for Assimilation?
    Solinger, Dorothy Davis, Deborah Kraus, Richard Haughton, Barry Perry, Elizabeth L.
  • Willful Times: Unpredictability, Planning, and Presentism among Entrepreneurs in a Central Chinese City
    Steffen, Megan
  • The Hustle Economy: Informality, Uncertainty, and the Geographies of Getting By
    Thieme, Adeline Tatiana
  • Peasants, Peasantries, and (De)peasantization in the Capitalist World-System
    Vanhaute, Eric Babones, Salvatore Chase-Dunn, Christopher
  • Dramaturgies of Dissent: The Spatial Politics of Squatting in Berlin, 1968–
    Vasudevan, Alex
  • Producing Community: The MST and Land Reform Settlements in Brazil
    Wolford, Wendy
  • Land Development, Inequality, and Urban Villages in China
    Wu, Fulong
  • Rural Migrant Workers and China's Differential Citizenship: A Comparative Institutional Analysis
    Wu, Jieh-min King Whyte, Martin Adams, Jennifer
  • The Would-Be Migrant: Post-socialist Primitive Accumulation, Potential Transnational Mobility, and the Displacement of the Present in Northeast China
    Xiang, Biao
  • Hundreds of Millions in Suspension
    Xiang, Biao
  • Suspension: Seeking Agency for Change in the Hypermobile World
    Xiang, Biao
  • My Life Is Elsewhere: Social Exclusion and Rural Migrants’ Consumption of Homeownership in Contemporary China
    Zhan, Yang
  • The Urbanization of Rural Migrants and the Making of Urban Villages in Contemporary China
    Zhan, Yang
  • Forced from Home: Property Rights, Civic Activism, and the Politics of Relocation in China
    Zhang, Li
  • Ziyou (Freedom), Occupational Choice, and Labor: Bangbang in Chongqing, People's Republic of China
    Zhang, Xia