The Production Of Spectacle And The Restructuring Of Rural Local Space

The rapid economic growth since China’s Reform and Opening-up has brought about a rapid transformation of China’s social culture.The development of information technology and the Internet has also completely changed people’s production mode and lifestyle.In this social change context,rural areas are facing a severe competitive environment with the acceleration of factor mobility,and have more urgent development demands with rural revitalization becoming a national strategy.Many of them are trying to adopt the tourism industry as a way to get into the modern industrial division system.With all the facts above happening,the space and landscape of the rural areas are undergoing dramatic changes,and the research object of this paper,"Web-star Village",emerged as a kind of new spatial phenomenon recently.How do these "Web-star Village"come into being?What characteristics do they have?Is becoming a "Web-star Village" a sustainable rural development path?With all the questions above,this thesis,focusing on this new space,conducts its research.The thesis introduces the concept of spectacle from the social criticism theory of the society of spectacle,and draws on the new institutionalism analysis approach to construct a theoretical framework for understanding and interpreting the formation mechanism of the "Web-star village".It is pointed out that the formation mechanism of the "Web-star village" spatial phenomenon is just spectacle,which is a new type of social operation mechanism that exists in the society of spectacle.Spectacle is a kind of cultural power relation constructed by visually constructing objects that are viewed.On the one hand,the network system formed by it constitutes a macro-structure of the contemporary society,which has a disciplinary effect on the agency,and is the social environment background and action motivation of the agency’s action.On the other hand,the agency in the power relation network can also participate in the operation of the power relations using spectacle,reconstructs the macro structure system by producing this kind of power relationship actively.Moreover,in the information era,the ways to produce this kind of power relationship include not only the production of physical spectacles,but also the production of media spectacles in electronic form.Thereby,The "Web-star Village" is a spatial representation of the reconstruction of the power relation structure of spectacle,or say,a spatial reconstruction of the rural locality resulting from the spectacle production and operation.The thesis uses a typical case of "Web-star Village"-Wangjialing Village,in Fenghua District,Ningbo City,to conduct its demonstration analysis.Firstly,it analyzes the production process of physical spectacles at the village.It is pointed out that the local agencies is defined by the governance system of the village.To pursuit economic value is their motivation,and the lack of resources in the current rural areas constitutes the objective reasons why the agencies finally resort to spectacle production.Later,the media spectacle production of social agencies who are out of the rural locality was analyzed.The thesis shows how the media and the public make use of the physical spectacles of the village to produce and operate media spectacles in the media space to achieve their respective value appeals.The spatial effect of the series of spectacle production actions of these agencies is to transform Wangjialing Village from a small mountain village which was never been known into a "Web-star Village".To conclude the characteristics of it,it is a space of visually oriented landscape and a space of imagery landscape cognitions.Its local social relations go through a process of scaling up,and the social practice within the space turns to carnival visual consumption.Although the production of spectacle has brought dramatic changes to Wangjialing village,this spatial reconstruction effect is short-time.From the perspective of sustainable development,the local economic value realization and the spectacle reproduction are still problems of the village’s development.Then,after completing the theoretical discussion and demonstration analysis,the thesis carried out a critical thinking on this phenomenon of "Web-star Village" and tried to offer some suggestions for the sustainable development of the rural.The chapter arrangement and main contents of the thesis are as follows:Chapter I,Introduction.Including the background of the study,the research questions and its significance,the relevant research review and the research methods used.The second chapter constructs the theoretical analysis framework of the space formation mechanism of "Web-star Village".The third chapter mainly analyzes the motivation of spectacle production of the agencies and their production methods in the case of Wangjialing Village.The fourth chapter summarizes the spatial reconstruction results of Wangjialing Village and the effects on its local development.In the fifth chapter,after completing the theoretical discussion and demonstration analysis,this thesis summarizes several key conclusions of the "Web-star Village" phenomenon,and carries out some critical reflections.It is pointed out that the landscape disorder of the rural,the injustice of the spectacle power and the "alienation" of rural landscape are issues that need to be furtherly pondered.And from the standpoint of sustainable rural development,the author gives a few development suggestions for the transformation of "Web-star Village".The sixth chapter is the conclusion and discussion of the thesis.