The Shanghai Educational Zone from Perspective of the Politics of Scale

Abstract

This paper seeks to grasp the space with the help of scale. Dividing the abstract space by scale and analyzing it is the foundation of this study. As a concept discussed as one of the socio-spatial dimensions, scale refers to the spatial scope in which natural or human events processes, and relationships begin, spread vertically and horizontally, and operate. Scale is an epistemological issue because its scope of operation is constructed and reconstructed through political, social, and cultural processes. Politics of scale is a political and social relationship in which social agents expand their influence by constructing a network of inclusion and exclusion both inside and outside the scale. Politics of scale at the agents level surrounds the scale of reality and confirms the act of each agent expanding or reducing their arena of activity. In Shanghai these activities are investigated through purchase of school district housing, making use of social capital, economic capital, and cultural capital within the educational space. Each agent uses Guanxi or academic grouping to seek exchanges and communication with agents on different scales, and to induce cooperation. In this process, by attempting a scale transformation, the agent strengthens his own capacity and executes political activity that isolate and weaken the other scale. With the discourse on new quality education, the dynamics between the agents are confirmed through the politics of scale between social agents surrounding the scale of imagination. Having intentions to expand their influence, central educational institutions and local educational institutions spread the ideology of new quality throughout Shanghai reconstructing discourse, that is, the reconstruction of the scale of expression. Central and local educational institutions expand their influence by carrying out school districtization and school grouping throughout Shanghai, focusing on quality education. Parents use the Guanxi network between personal scale and school scale to extend their influence to get students admitted to key schools. Focusing on the scale of education in the politics of scale at the level of activities, key schools make their own capacity stronger by revitalizing the education quality and transforming key schools into academic districts to make them stronger, while key schools use school choice bans to isolate and weaken family scale.