Elena Meyer-Clement

• Presentation
• CV
• Research outputs

Primary fields of research

My research focuses on China's authoritarian governance, particularly on intergovernmental relations in the Chinese party-state, and state-society relations.

Main research topics include:

• Grassroots politics
• Urbanization
• Rural development
• Land politics 
• Political economy of culture
• Propaganda and censorship

Current research

In the project "Steering urban-rural integration: Administrative reconficguration for a unified citizenship" (2018-2023) (co-led with René Trappel, Freiburg, funded by the German Research Foundation), I investigate the transformation of rural China through urbanization and housing (and resettlement) politics in semi-urban areas. A main focus lies on the consequences of these politics for state-society relations and grassroots politics. Fieldwork for this project was conducted mainly in Gansu and Zhejiang Provinces.  

In the project "Social Worlds: China's cities as spaces of worldmaking"(since November 2020) (co-led with Björn Alpermann, Würzburg), I look more closely at the evolving social relations in China's new urban spaces, and I take a comparative perspective on China's urbanization and its interconnectedness with global capitalist developments.

Selected publications

1. Published

   Party Hegemony and Entrepreneurial Power in China: Institutional change in the film and music industries

   Meyer-Clement, Elena, Sep 2015, Routledge.

   Research output: Book/Report › Book › Research › peer-review

2. Published

   China’s rural urbanization and the state: Putting the countryside first?

   Meyer-Clement, Elena & Zeuthen, J. W., 3 Jun 2020, In: China Information. 34, 2

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research