抄録
This paper takes its cue from Kuan-Hsing Chen’s book “Asia as Method” as a way to think of what it means to discuss gentrification in places where capitalist urbanisation dominates but gentrification as a linguistic expression does not exist. While emphasising the importance of inter-referencing within Asia, Chen (2010, p.226) questions the usefulness of Euro-American theories “in our attempts to understand our own conditions and practices.” He also highlights the linguistic fluidity that produces a diverse range of translated versions of a concept born out of the experience of the Western modernity, arguing that such fluidity is an indication of how political cultures in Asia can be diverse and differentiated from the West.
In contemporary urban studies, gentrification is perhaps one of the most notable concept that is subject to such linguistic fluidity within the Global South. Gentrification has increasingly become a rapidly accepted concept to be mobilised by urban social movements, but often entails different versions of translation and understanding. While acknowledging the need of theorising from Asia (hence, Asia as Method) to address the imbalance of knowledge production in the global urban studies, I critically analyse the ways in which such concept as gentrification has been used in contemporary urban politics in diverse contexts of urbanisation, and how such ‘linguistic fluidity’ can also be taken as an indication of the presence of political sub-cultures that have developed over time in the Global South but have affinity with gentrification. The role of the state in building the architecture of gentrification in the Global South is to be particularly emphasised in developing such linguistic fluidity.
