Ph.D. Candidate

Bio

Tian Tian (1992) has been a PhD student in the Department of Agricultural Economics since 2016. She obtained her master’s degree in China Agricultural University, with rich experience of field research. Tian is interested in livelihoods of smallholder farmers, indigenous land rights and rural labor markets. Currently she is working on rural planning and rural development.

Research

Title: Rural planning in Guizhou, China.

Great changes have taken place in China's countryside in the past decades, like in the majority of developing countries. This kind of changes are different from the spontaneous rural transformation which were related to the reforms and opening of the economy in 1990s. The current changes include disintegration and reconstruction of the rural areas driven by capital interests, authority interventions, and interests of different groups. This process involves government at different departments and levels, NGOs, enterprises, scholars, specialists and villagers. They all scramble for discourse power in the rural areas.

This research aims to understand the logic of rural spatial planning. The research focuses on the process by which rural communities are planned and programmed, and explores the distribution of resources, power and knowledge in the process of re-production of space, and answers the questions: ‘Who?’, ‘What?’, ‘How?’, ‘Why and for Whom?’ A field study in a village in southwest China is underway to follow up a complete rural planning and programming by using an actor-oriented approach.

Keywords

Rural planning; spatial reproduction; powers and rights; narratives of development

Contact details

titian.Tian@UGent.be
Coupure Links 653 (Office A2.098)
9000 Ghent
+32 9 264 60 67