Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

3-2022

Abstract

We conceptualize typical rural communities in China as diversified economic clusters. In normal times, economic actors in these communities rarely cooperate with each other, but are integrated into separate commodity chains. These “diversified clusters”, however, show resilience and flexibility when an external shock—the COVID-19 pandemic—disrupts the spatial connections throughout the existing commodity chains. In this study, we use primary field data collected from one typical rural community in Northern China to show how economic diversity, aided by social networks and space-shrinking technologies, allowed for the vertical commodity chains to be reconfigured temporarily into localized horizontal commodity networks to cope with the emergencies brought about by the pandemic. Our findings suggest that while market integration can create precarity at the individual level, it can also contribute to economic resilience at the community level if it increases economic diversity and complementarity within the community. This study sheds lights on discussions of the resilience of rural and economic clustering by a novel conceptualization of diversified clusters and also offers a nuanced understanding of the connection between market integration and community resilience.

Keywords

COVID-19 pandemic, resilience, diversified clusters, commodity chain, commodity network, economic cluster

Discipline

Agribusiness | Asian Studies | Public Health | Work, Economy and Organizations

Research Areas

Sociology

Publication

Land

Volume

11

Issue

3

First Page

1

Last Page

17

ISSN

2073-445X

Identifier

10.3390/land11030404

Publisher

MDPI

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.3390/land11030404

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