Practice makes perfect: Approaching Chinese state entrepreneurialism conjuncturally

Abstract

This commentary argues that the practicability and viability of conjunctural analysis as a method can only be assessed and developed through collective efforts at stress-testing. I draw on key elements of Peck's method to offer a reflexive account considering the contours of a conjunctural analysis of Chinese state entrepreneurialism. I show how conjunctural analysis allows me to identify and understand the multiplex causality of China's shift in approach to urban redevelopment, and to develop relevant midlevel concepts which help to revise and broaden understandings of state entrepreneurialism. Rather than a one-to-one mapping between case and concept, conjunctural analysis has the potential to allow researchers to theorise geographical phenomena across time and space, where multiple lines of analyses and conceptualisation can enable horizontal and vertical theorisation, offering erstwhile obfuscated analytical insight and theoretical generativity.