Shi, Jiannan. 2022. “‘Should We Trust the State?’ Narratives on How EvictedVendors Respond to Reconstruction of Their Wet Market in Post-Reform, Urbanizing Shanghai.” * Journal of Politics and International Affairs at NYU, Volume XXVIII, No. 2. issuu.com/jpia.club/docs/spring2022.
A previous version “Should I Trust the State? Narratives on How Vendors Evicted from Their Wet Market Reproduce Their Space in Shanghai” was presented at NYU Shanghai Undergraduate Research Symposium, Fall 2021.
Landscape of Shanghai showing both traditional residence and skyscrapers in the distance. Photo/Jiannan Shi
The wet market in China upholds shopping meanwhile social and cultural meanings. The capital-driven urbanization and government-led regeneration projects are transforming the wet markets into vegetable markets in post-reform China, sometimes neglecting the situations the vendors in wet markets would face after that transformation. This paper draws evidence from ethnography and interviews with vendors around a former traditional wet market under reconstruction in Shanghai. It presents the evicted vendors’ responses and narratives to reconstruction: relocations and emotional coping. Economically, vendors re-produced their space after the eviction to cope with the loss of their marketplace ecosystem. The relocations are subject to the vendor’s perception of urban regeneration policy and Hukou-related native places. Emotionally, the vendors’ narratives around urban regeneration show their ambiguous definitions and attitudes towards “guojia” [the state]. The state's role is salient in transforming the wet markets and evident in the micro-level interactions and decision-making among vendors.