Power Relations at the Alley Level

Drawing on participant observation, surveys, and interviews in Beijing and Taipei, the book from which the activated chapter was drawn shows that state-sponsored neighborhood organizations remain salient and deeply rooted in certain parts of urban society, even as other constituents ignore or reject them. Data were gathered during site visits between 1998 and 2011 to several neighborhoods in Beijing and Taipei, including long semi-ethnographic visits in neighborhood offices. Government records, including official city yearbooks, were also consulted. The interview data are either transcriptions of notes taken by hand or directly typed. The ethnographic / observational data from Beijing are transcribed hand-written notes taken during or immediately after a site visit. In Taipei, the author sometimes used the same method and sometimes took notes on a laptop computer during the site visit. For the government records, the files are a mix of photocopies of some records and typed notes.