Possession As An Fact, Strategy And Cognition

There are amounts of public-rented houses and self-built houses in Beijing old town,which are actually in a possession relationship with the residents who live in. Based onthe possession relation, the residents cultivated a series of possess behaviors. While theinstitution transformation from redistribution to market economy, the possession factand behaviorcontinued in Beijing old town, and finally result in some conflicts with thecity government urban renewal policy. Taking possession as the entry point, the studytry to analyze the unique mechanism and logic of the property institution underthesocialist redistribution system and its transformation. The theories mainly refer to aresocialist city studies represented by the eastern European scholars Kornai and Szenlenyi.Also the processing and interactivity perspectives which used to explain the deviated“property right”phenomenons prevalent in transitional China are important references.The main contribution of the study is to propose the actual houses belonging relationsare procession more than property right for the residents in the old town of Beijing,deeply analyze the procession logic in the relationship between houses and residentsand in the resident’s habitually behavior strategy. Pointing out the conflicts raised by thepossession logic continues to today and promoting the understanding of socialist cityand its old town decay.The principal finding of the study is to figure out how the socialist city’s land andhouse institutions lead to a distorted relationship between residents and houses, with thepossession behavior and perceive, contribute to the decay of public affairs and thephysical space in old town of Beijing. The urban renewal policy under the markettransformation tends to move out all the old residents instead of empowering them theproperty right and changing the possession relationship, which will finally result in thelost of the place.The study materials collected from the fieldwork in Beijing bell tower bay hutongdistrict, existing study literatures and some archival data from Beijing municipalarchives and Beijing eastern city district archives. Field works were conducted in thespring of2013, including small scale questionnaire investigation, participantobservation and depth interview, the interviewees are residents and experts andjournalist on old town problem.