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Women's Property, Women's Agency in China's ‘New Enclosure Movement’: Evidence from Zhejiang
Author(s) -
Sargeson Sally
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
development and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.267
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1467-7660
pISSN - 0012-155X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-7660.2008.00499.x
Subject(s) - expropriation , agency (philosophy) , china , property rights , compensation (psychology) , property (philosophy) , state (computer science) , distribution (mathematics) , business , political science , law , sociology , psychology , social science , mathematical analysis , philosophy , mathematics , epistemology , algorithm , computer science , psychoanalysis
Who gets what, why and how, when Chinese villagers' land is enclosed? Focusing specifically on changes in women's property rights and drawing on data from Zhejiang province, this article shows that state, village and household institutions interact to produce significant gender disparities in both the compensation paid to expropriated villagers and the registration of ownership of household assets. Yet it would be incorrect to conclude that, dispossessed, women thereby lack agency. Analysis of women's responses to expropriation suggests that by selectively deploying laws, rules and norms in different settings, women are influencing not only compensation distribution, but also the terms under which the state compensates villagers for their expropriation and the gender relations in which property is embedded.