Mapping dynamic events: popular contention in China over space and time

Abstract

Students of popular contention have long observed that social unrest mimics the forces of nature, likening it to a ‘prairie fire’ or observing a ‘snowball effect’ of strikes and work stoppages. Yet little is known or understood either about how unrest spreads across space over time or regional susceptibility to unrest. To test whether such metaphorical references may have empirical grounding, this project links historical data on two documented waves of social unrest during the Republican (1911–1949) and Reform (1978 to present) eras in Chinese history to static geographic information system maps, using ArcGIS Tracking Analyst. Building upon the hierarchical regional space model and G.W. Skinner's work on macroregions in China, I test three hypotheses regarding the concentration and spread of contentious events within two macroregions during two 3-year waves of unrest in modern Chinese history. The use of animated data layers to capture and record dynamic events over time and space can help to determine whether patterns of unrest clustering and diffusion remain stable over time and to test whether spatial knots of ‘ungovernability’ – long a feature of Chinese bureaucratic lore – persist in the People's Republic, despite changes in regime type, economic fluctuations, and the passage of time.