Learning from the Other ‘Other’– Doing Mobile Ethnography Across Asia, Africa, and Beyond
2 - The Happiest people in China: Lived realities of the landless farmer in Xiaogang, Guangzhou
Saturday, June 14, 2025
09:00 - 10:45 GMT
Location: LOS-115
Presenter(s)
SB
Sangeeta Banerji
NYU Shanghai, China
Presentation Abstract The fast-paced urbanisation in Asia at the dawn of the new millennium has given rise to varied urban forms amalgamating the old and the new, the rich and the poor, and the coarse and sophisticated. In China, the rapid urban expansion has created urban villages or chengzhongcun nestled between the megacities. In this paper, we explore the inner lives of the locals within an urban village in Guangzhou, Xiaogang, which has been slated for redevelopment at the end of 2023 by the municipal government. Xiaogang is a unique urban village that resisted the first push by the authorities to redevelop twenty years ago, resulting in violent altercations. Since then, it has experienced substantial unregulated growth that is reasonably lucrative to the local farmers. The rent from these densely packed housing quarters has allowed more than a generation of these families to live comfortable lives in Xiaogang. This security of tenure and livelihood yet again has been called into question with the recent notification of redevelopment of this village. In the first part of this comparative project that we present in this paper, we present the observations from ethnographic oral history interviews with three generations of locals in Xiaogang. Through the insights from the cross-generational interviews, we will discuss the transformation of the locals' relationship with the land. Through immersive participant observation and visual ethnographical tools, we will illustrate the lived realities of the people within Xiaogang, threatened by the insatiable desire of capital to fix itself within the city space.
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)