关键词: 领域, 地盘, 权地观, 关系, 政治地理学

Abstract:

Territory is a core concept representing complicated power-space relationship in Political Geography. The concept came from biology and went through a rapid development stage in the past century. Despite of the fact that territory study heads forward multivariate scale, the core viewpoints maintain rarely changed. With the increase of empirical analysis of territory, it seems easy to perceive the discrepancy between the imported theory and the actual situation of Chinese society. The traits of power, border and space of territory are founded on the western discourse system. We put forward that “dipan” is a much powerful and maneuverable indigenous notion in China compared to territory. It consists of two Chinese characters: “di” means land while “pan” stands for bearing the weight of something. Thus, this term can be understood as occupation or control of certain space through objects or special social power, and the latter meaning is more frequently used. Chinese society is a nepotistic society, where reasonable power according with etiquette order speaks louder in daily life. By term analysis of everyday application and literary works, we find that the special social power in “dipan” is closely related to “guanxi”. “Dipan” has 3 features. First of all, it expresses a strong subjective feeling. Being well acquainted with each other, long-term stable relationship and mutual benefit interaction can be formed. The closer the “guanxi” is, the easier it is to cross the standard power boundary. Secondly, power brought by “guanxi” and operated in “dipan” are often irregular. Gatekeeper enjoys varying degrees of autonomous discretion power in the handling of specific affairs. Intimate relationship would be taken into consideration in situation handling process. Thirdly, while territory puts emphasis on boundaries, “dipan” lays stress on fuzzification of boundary. With vague border, various subjects could make use of the resources flexibly. One good turn deserves another; harmony could be achieved and multi-win come into being. This is why “guanxi” occupies an important position in Chinese daily behavior. Therefore, “dipan” can be regarded as the spatial projection of Chinese-style “guanxi”. According to the types of “guanxi”, “dipan” can be divided into 3 types. Emotional “dipan” is usually generated by blood and familial relation, and “courtesy” is the main factor shaping its space; instrumental “dipan” is formed by utilitarian relationship; and the mixed “dipan” is affected by both personal relations and objective factors like spatial distance. “Dipan” system becomes a buffer between my territory and others’ territory, where power and behavior freedom in certain space can be achieved through “guanxi” construction.

Key words: territory, dipan, power-space relationship, guanxi, Political Geography