Landscpe Making,Space Dominating And State Transition: The Topography Of A Northen City

The study is about the topography of a northern city.The topographic turn of anthropology emphasizes the materiality of the world especially the real space of human. We can understand the human activity and their road through social actor's search of their road. In the historical anthropology research of the city, I take it as a continuing and organic whole and try to exhibit the different type of space domination from late empire to present of China through the history of the city space, historical building and home. Then I analyze the state transition of China. Different from previous anthropological city studies, I don't focus on the human factor such as organization and group but the material factor such as landscape. This perspective avoids the one-sidedness in the city study and exhibits the whole city. It also achieves the integration of human and material, past and present, nature and culture.When rethinking of the history essence, historical anthropologists proposed the concept of “history making” and emphasize the pluralism, subjectivity and constructiveness of history. Inspired by it, I propose the concept of “landscape making”. For one thing, I will analyze its cultural symbol and history writing, discuss the practice and process in it. For another, I will emphasize the subjectivity of the process and its power relation. In other words, landscape making focuses on the subjectivity and pluralism of history, emphasizes its power relation and the mutual construction of human and landscape. In the view of landscape making, the power, culture and history in the city emerge wholly.In the landscape making, state power is a dominant factor of the process and other social factors also play important roles. City landscape is a work of multiple factors. The landscape making of the city affects the city space and more respects. The landscape making in the state control strengthens the state power, and also affects public life, history memory, identity and city culture.Through the historical practice process of landscape making in the city, I classify the space domination from late empire to present of China.“Symbol domination” of late empire: Through the landscape making of city wall and moat, the power and culture of empire developed into landscape and symbol. It Penetrated naturally and continuously into the public life and idea, and were accepted by the public. Symbol domination emphasized the public ethics and belief and the maintenance to empire cultural hegemony. “Overall domination” of Mao era: In the totalism politics, the state monopolized all the resources and thus totally dominated the city space. It included the planning and reconstruction to the city space, the domination to the individual body, property and fate, and even the forcible control to individual by the state ideology. “Daily domination”: state ideology of development doctrine becomes a cultural hegemony in the individual daily life. When the control to the individual body, status and idea become weak, the individual life falls into more invisible disciplines. In the development discourse, all the individual lives, from the way of making a living to content of consumption, from city environment to individual home, from the health to leisure style, from Life custom to idea, are totally included in the planning of national modernization and becomes the parts of the politics.The historical practice process of landscape making and type of space domination shows the political consciousness and aim of different period. It helps to understand the state transition of China. Compared with the limited and inefficient exterior control, the symbol domination of the empire was universal and has wide influence. The rule of empire was more symbolic and devoted to cultural leadership and symbolic control. Overall domination and daily domination shows that the state devotes to transforming society and total development. The state permeates the society and builds the whole mobilization mechanism, control mechanism and operating mechanism. The state is a mobilizing state. The mobilizing state is different in overall domination and daily domination. It shows totalism and dominant in Mao era and present.The state transition of China can be summed up as follows: Under the specific historical background and ideology, the state becomes a universal dominator from an inactive symbolic rule. It devotes to a total planning, mobilizing and reforming the society. The state transition of China is unidirectional permeation from state to society and has a long way to go.