Atomised territory and assembled positionalities

The Concrete Plateau by Andrew Grant takes us to the state-guided urbanisation in Xining, a periphery of the Tibetan Plateau. Here, Grant embarks on an exploration of a novel urban assemblage emerging out of the encounter of the Han-style civilising machine and the everyday practices of place-making by the mobile Tibetan population. The participation of Tibetans through a micropolitics of place-making, Grant argues, served as a means to ‘rerouted state attempts to mute local politics and asserted themselves as a community that belongs in China's urban future’ (3).

While scholarly attention to China's civilising machinery has a substantial history, most of these inquiries, particularly in sociology and anthropology, have focused on the impact of various discourses, such as suzhi (quality) (Elizabeth J. Perry, 2013), Shanzhai (copycat) products (Pang, 2008), gardening (Barmé, 2008) and new citizens with entrepreneurial spirit (Ong, 2007). Geographical studies, especially those considering the spatial dimensions of subjects’ behaviour, have been comparatively limited and fragmented. Grant's work stands out by its emphasis on capturing the spatiality of mobile Tibetans’ behaviour and comprehending the dynamic milieu within China's governance of civilising machinery.

In response to the long-debated question of ‘what is urban?’, the book examines urbanisation in its two definitions: first, as a civilising machine within China's nationalist project, implemented through institutional planning practices by authorities; and second, as an everyday way of life enacted by residents. In this context, the central argument of the book is to elucidate how urbanization, evolving at the intersection of these two processes, leads to a territorial reconfiguration of space.

It is along the line of territorial reconfiguration of space embodied by the two processes of urbanisation that I aim to delve further, by engaging with my own studies on the effecturated territory (Wang, 2021; Yao and Wang, 2022). Grant proposes an epistemological shift away from the troubling geometric categorisations of centre and periphery towards a topological understanding of space, where ‘the rural and the urban interpenetrate on the eastern Tibetan Plateau’ (23). The concept of assemblage is introduced to unravel the ongoing processes of urbanisation by mobile Tibetans and their practices of place-making, wherein Tibetans assemble ‘materials, bodies, memories, and deities in an urban landscape thick with political possibility’ (23).

In his epistemological endeavour to reconfigure the urban and the rural in topological terms, Grant foregrounds the bodily scale, where individual Tibetans move and engage in various lifestyles, imbuing the space they inhabit with meaning. As such, urban space takes form where urban Tibetans stay and live, regardless of their hukou registration.

Furthermore, the focus on the scale of bodily movement allows Grant to pay attention to the rhythm of daily activities. Urban Tibetans often practice urban lifestyles in Xining during the week and return to farming and pastoral areas on weekends. The temporal dimension opens the door to observing a relational simultaneity that characterises the dynamic coexistence of the rural and urban, where an ‘exterior’ rural presence is also found within urban areas, and urban materials and ideas permeate villages and grasslands. So Grant contends that the topographical extension of the urban into the rural facilitates the topological emergence of the rural within the urban context, exemplified by the sale of commodities like Rebgong goré and Tsekhok yogurt from motorised carts in various locations across Xining (37). The circulation of glass-and-cement-style urban ideas, along with traditional Tibetan cuisine often associated with rural lifestyles, transcends temporal and spatial boundaries. This dynamic interplay blurs the traditional distinctions between urban and rural spaces, imbuing them with a fluid and interconnected quality.

The unique regional modernity of Xining, namely, a two-directional folding of the urban and the rural, is formed in close relations with the circulations of people and goods, just like how ‘historical regional trade and the boundary-spanning exchange and resourcefulness that have shaped the Tibetan Plateau more generally’ (47). The epistemological interpretation of modernization through the circulation of things well demonstrates Foucault's (2008) proposition to read territory as a milieu enveloping moving subjects in his space of security, and further the Deleuzian and Guattari (1987) conception of civilization as a process of striating smooth surface through regulating the movements of things.

In our reading of the Deleuzian and Guattari (1987) account of effecturated territory, territory is established through the strategic placement of human and non-human things, akin to pieces in a game of Go, to occupy contiguous regions and influence subsequent spatial configurations (Yao and Wang, 2022). When unruly movements of nomads form smooth space, interventions such as regulating speed, direction, or pathways introduce new rules to moving objects, ultimately transforming the smooth space into regulated, striated space. It is in this process, ‘royal science’ to govern things is established through articulating selective rules as natural, authoritative, or progressive, as I explained in the rule-making by transnational knowledge bodies or national states (Wang, 2019; Yao and Wang, 2022). In this context, civilization can be conceptualised as a process-oriented towards the regulation of the movements of both human and non-human elements, consequently shaping the milieu that envelops them (Foucault, 2008; Paul Virilio et al., 2007; Yao and Wang, 2022).

This process of civilization, however, is dynamic, as the management of movement is never perfect and is subject to resistance and failures. As Grant stresses, a keen observation of the aspirations and dreams of Tibetans at the bodily scale reveals desires that are not necessarily in total opposition to those encouraged by the civilising apparatus. Instead, these desires should be seen as channels or adaptations within it, sometimes embraced and at other times rejected. Whereas the urban ideas might influence Tibetans across cities and rural areas, on weekdays and weekends, the indigenous, Tibetan way of living, carried out by ‘Rebgong goré and Tsekhok yogurt sold from the backs of motorized carts’, breaks through the striated space of urban, letting Tibetans in all corners of the city connect topologically with their ‘rural’ habits. The resulting territory is complex, where the urban and rural interpenetrate, atomised in a distributed pattern across temporal and spatial dimensions.

Xining emerging from the intersection of multiple assemblages

It is also through the concepts of assemblage and royal science that I question the way in which Grant treats the site of Xining City. I argue that the city is an emergent place at the intersection of two assemblages: the assemblage of the urbanization machine driving China's nationalist project of civilization, and the assemblage of Tibet that has evolved over centuries of historical changes. In this context, there are multiple royal sciences at play, with a multitude of positionalities enacted by diverse actants (Wang and Chen, 2019).

The nationalist project of Chinese civilization machine as an assemblage

The assemblage of governing entities is far from a cohesive whole. Instead, it often embodies a prosaic state, characterised by an unscripted amalgamation of ‘social practices, discourses, rules, power, and symbolic and material forms of governance and institutions’ (Moisio and Paasi, 2013). The notion of prosaicness underscores the diverse and multifaceted nature of agency, highlighting the mundane, unsystematic, indeterminate and unintended ways in which the state's presence is woven into daily life practices (Painter, 2006).

This prosaicness is particularly salient in the case of Xining, the capital city of Qinghai Province, where over 90% of its entire jurisdiction is occupied by autonomous prefectures and counties. It is therefore an oversimplification to assert an overwhelming power of Han-style planning authorities and a perfectly executed urbanization model aligning with the nationalist image of Chinese civilization. Moreover, the image of Chinese civilization, as elucidated by many scholars, is not homogenous but is often propagated as ‘a big family for 56 ethnic groups’. The assembled civilization machine of Xining entails a variety of heterogeneous actors, encompassing various governmental apparatuses, interconnected institutions such as land policies, planning projects, social welfare policies, education, and infrastructure development, as well as individual elites from various ethnic groups. It is inevitable to observe less rehearsed material and discursive practices of different departments, less cohesive collaborations between departments and subsequently a degree of improvisation (Mitchell, 2008; Wang and Tan, 2020). The prosaicness is missing in the book.

Tibet as a historical assemblage spanning centuries

Throughout the book, there are instances where the portrayal of Tibetans appears somewhat homogenised, presenting them as if they all belong to a highly uniform group, embodying a singular rural nomadic lifestyle characterised by farms and tents, only to diverge into various trajectories on their trips to Xining. However, it is crucial to recognise that Tibetan civilization is anything but a naturally cohesive entity. Instead, it is an assemblage itself that has evolved over an extensive historical period, encompassing diverse languages, distinct clans, varying religious practices, and differing social classes all intertwined within its fabric.

For the past decades, Area studies on the highlands of Asia have debated the ever-emerging civilizations of nomads and their territories, constantly evolving and transcending boundaries due to wars, trade routes, pilgrim paths, and cross-clan marriages. The literature on Zomia (Michaud, 2010), for instance, unveils an invisible transnational area shaped by both processes of imperial empire-building and internal fragmentation, resulting in various forms of marginalization, and remarkable linguistic and religious diversity (Tenzin, 2016). A literal rhizome pattern of Tibetan Civilization has been unrivalled by scholars on Sowa Rigpa (known as Tibet Medicine in the medical trade) (Craig and Gerke, 2016; Kloos, 2017), which cautions against a naming strategy that employs linguistic tactics to foster national identity while forgetting heterogeneity. This rhizome-like pattern of Tibetan civilization underscores the need for sensitivity to the diverse positionalities of different actants when examining the Tibetan Plateau through the lens of assemblage.

Assembled positionalities

In light of the complex dynamics of the Tibetan Plateau, it is essential to refrain from simplifying the construction of the Tibetan Plateau as a unilateral transformation from an untamed, smooth space to an orderly, striated one, solely driven by the imposition of Chinese nationalist civilization's royal science onto Tibetan nomads. Instead, what unfolds is a multifaceted encounter involving multiple assemblages, each wielding its distinct striated space regulated by its respective royal science.

Central to this perspective is the concept of assembled positionalities. On the Tibetan Plateau, individuals, materials, and discourses occupy socially situated and subjectively positioned roles within this intricate landscape. Their processes of envisioning and acting are inherently relational, entwined with the complexities of uneven power structures. To echo Simone's (2010) insights, the urbanization of relationships among these diverse elements is marked by a kaleidoscope of positions and practices of inhabitation, characterised by both rapidity and intensity, defying clear categorization.

This ongoing interplay among the multiple rules and movements enacted by differently positioned actants shapes the mutual transformation of various striated spaces. What emerges is a rich tapestry of a ‘regional assemblage’ that crystallises at the crossroads of agency exercised by a multitude of actants (Yao and Wang, 2022).