Guest Editor's Introduction

Abstract

Since the 1990s, with the reform of the market economy system, urbanization, and the impact of globalization, urban communities are being reconstructed and renewed at an unprecedented rate. In the process of rapid economic development, the relatively sluggish social administration has also brought about an increasingly tense relationship among urban residents, the state, and real estate developers. Facing large numbers of problems such as pollution, forced removal, building management charges, and land occupation, residents are not only appealing to local government, but are also beginning to organize themselves, taking collective action to defend their residential rights. Academics are now increasingly paying more attention to the study of these actions defending homeowners’ rights. The three articles in this issue focus on action strategy, culture frame, and value justification in movements in defense of homeowner rights. In the case of Lijiang Garden, Guangzhou, studied by Zhu Jiangang and Wang Chao, senior homeowners alternately used strategies of authentication and challenge to wrestle with a real estate management company, trying to organize a homeowners’ committee and participate in community governance. Behind their strategies were two sets of cultural logic: family and legitimacy. In the study of the case of West Passage, Rear Sea Division, Shenzhen city, Liu Chun used justification modes to discuss the six concepts of homeowners’ values in their actions in defense of their rights as well as the process of growth and decline in these six values. Zhu Jiangang’s study on the fight for