Urbanization’s mediator: Reassembling rural tibetan lives through pig breed changes

IF 3.4 2区社会学 Q1 GEOGRAPHY

Geoforum Pub Date : 2025-03-18 DOI:10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104262

Dan Wu , Yang Zhan

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Abstract

This is a study of the reasons underlying the disappearance of a local Tibetan pig breed, as well as pigs’ role in driving urbanization. It is based on immersive participant observation in a Tibetan village in Sichuan, China. Villagers’ transition from raising local Tibetan pigs to hybrid breeds has detached pigs from households due to a decline in pig rearing duration. Simultaneously, as pigs had previously played a crucial role in connecting humans to the land, the change in pig breeds also led to a loosening in the relationship between humans and the land, stimulating population mobility and liberating time and labor for villagers to engage in urbanization. The change in pig breed has led to the continual reorganization of human life in response to urbanization, a process that involves not only human participation but also the agency of various non-human actors. Through reexamining the concept of urbanization through changes in human-nonhuman relationships, this paper speaks to the material turn in anthropology, which has provided a new theoretical perspective for the study of urbanization in China.

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来源期刊

Geoforum GEOGRAPHY-

CiteScore

7.30

自引率

5.70%

发文量

201

期刊介绍： Geoforum is an international, inter-disciplinary journal, global in outlook, and integrative in approach. The broad focus of Geoforum is the organisation of economic, political, social and environmental systems through space and over time. Areas of study range from the analysis of the global political economy and environment, through national systems of regulation and governance, to urban and regional development, local economic and urban planning and resources management. The journal also includes a Critical Review section which features critical assessments of research in all the above areas.