Interpreting Community Solidarity in Response to Social Crises: A Case Study of T Community in T City of China

The expansion of urban territory has absorbed the original rural regions, which might leave the original villagers insecure in the face of life-changing shifts. In China, the community is the most fundamental urban governing unit, a platform for residents to participate in self-governance, ensuring the practice and operation of social policies at the grassroots level. Relocation communities are unique products amid urbanization by rebuilding villages into communities for the original people to live in. The original residents' experiences and efforts to cope with challenges and crises during the demolition, relocation, and return procedures, are academically valuable in researching community formation.

This paper takes the T community in T City of China as an example of a relocation community. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven original villagers who witnessed the community's formation and five staff members participated in community construction and future planning. This paper reproduces the process of T Community uniting residents, jointly solving crises, and enhancing individuals' capacity to deal with social crises over the previous 30 years of China's urbanization. It demonstrates how the community, as a fundamental component of social order, binds people to society; and how residents shape the new community. This paper found that the solidarity generated between the community and its inhabitants appears in three areas: economic rewards, cultural concepts, and social engagement. Residents participate in community governance and take the subjective initiative to shape the community form, which is critical for overcoming the insecurity caused by crises and future development. Further, this study discussed how to leverage the value of community solidarity to cope with foreseeable social risks in future-oriented practices.