From ‘forsaken site’ to ‘model village’: Unraveling the multi-scalar process of rural revitalization in China

Abstract

Researchers are paying increasing attention to issues of rural transformation. Exogenous and endogenous have been conventionally recognized as the mainstream paradigms of rural development. Drawing upon an ethnographic study in a traditional village in southern Jiangsu Province (Sunan), this article attempts to introduce a new panacea beyond the development dichotomy and analyze the multi-scalar process of rural revitalization in China. Foremost, findings reveals that the recession of traditional rural communities can be partially, if not all, attributed to the mismatch between local endowments and selected paths of development. Second, a successful path of rural development should be two-directional, which needs to look both inwards to mobilize local actors and outwards to ‘sell’ the territory to both nonlocal consumers and upper-level policymakers. Third, third-party bodies tend to serve as advocates and activists in the downscaling process of locality mobilization, and as promoters and mediators in the upscaling process of place-marketing. These results offer insight for subsequent research on rural revitalization and rural governance.