Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper adopts a person-centered approach to city-making and conceptualizes the gendered timescapes of suspension in a built-from-scratch Chinese city. A paradox in itself, suspension becomes a gendered experience of development that contains mobility and immobility at the same time.

Paper long abstract

Spectacular city-making and its intersections with real estate financialization, land speculation, and precarious urban living have generated much anthropological attention in varied geographical sites. This paper adopts a person-centered approach to city-making and conceptualizes the gendered timescapes of suspension amidst state-led development in a built-from-scratch Chinese city. My analysis focuses on a special group of pioneer settlers in an emerging model community planned to be the future city center—migrant mothers who took pains to build a new home in the absence of their spouses. By unpacking the lived experience of suspension as “women’s time” (Kristeva 1981), I discuss how a progressive imagination of speeding up urban development compels agentive temporal strategies on the ground that rely asymmetrically on women’s work in various forms while generating paradoxical aspirations for a fast-tracked familial future. A paradox in itself, suspension becomes a gendered experience of development that contains mobility and immobility at the same time.