China Summit Conference Launches Scenes Academy

By Sarah Fister Gale

Sociology Professor Terry Nichols Clark has spent much of his career developing scenes analysis, which explores how the rise of consumption in urban settings has expanded the definition of identity and interpenetration of macro and micro social relations.

“What seems new in one city or country has often been implemented elsewhere,” Clark says. “This makes comparisons globally a powerful research and policy tool.”

Scenes topics range from alternative drivers of urban economic development and rising citizen participation, to forms of political activism, including Black Lives Matter marches and climate change protests. These are part of a rise of symbols and culture inter-penetrating lifestyle to join work and leisure, consumption and production.

Scenes analysis uses 15 dimensions like neighborliness and localism, self-expression and glamour to capture the meaning of specific urban spaces. Scenes analysts have created indicators for zip codes and blocks, rural and urban, that measure these processes using new data sources, many internet-based, like restaurant reviews, martial arts studios, and Jehovah’s Witnesses churches. Lifestyle demands are key for urban policymakers, since precisely the talented and younger are highly mobile and change jobs and residence more frequently.

Scenes began with case studies of Chicago and Paris in the 1960s and grew into scenes from more than 10,000 cities, Clark says.

“The key to its scale and dynamism was not large central funding, but decentralized, yet globally connected collegial participation. As it grew, products spread, and people chose us more than we chose them.”

Participants from across the globe meet in conferences to frame project ideas, find funding, collect comparable data, and analyze how global processes shift across national and local contexts. Daniel Silver and Terry Clark, Scenescapes (University of Chicago Press and Academic Press in China) was named one of the 2019 Top Ten Good Books of Year in Social Science by the Social Sciences Academic Press from 2,700 and widely reviewed in Chinese media.

Scenes China Forum

Scenes work achieved a new benchmark in July, with the launch of the 2020 Scenes (China) Summit Online Forum. The virtual event attracted over 350,000  online participants who viewed and discussed four hours of presentations by 13 Chinese Scenes collaborators.

Presentations focused on three global themes:

• Scenes Reshaping Cultural China
• Scenes Innovating in Urban Life
• Scenes in Neighborhood Place Making

Throughout the virtual event, attendees explored the importance of scenes components in reconstituting physical urban spaces, reshaping social life and activities, as well as supplementing and explaining traditional theories of regional development.

Clark notes that China’s rapid urbanization and post-industrialization has caused its existing modes of economic development, social structure and cultural lifestyle to go through fundamental transformations. “It is similar to other countries, but happening faster and it is more explicitly articulated due the greater role of government and city planning.”

Scenes theory presents a culturally-oriented policy framework to inform these transformations, and to define the role of culture in economic growth, social governance, and talent flow. One city created a new agency to integrate separate government departments and build distinct scenes in different neighborhoods. Scenes ideas help city staff to “think less like a military commander, and more like a film director.”

Professor Chen Bo of the National Institute of Cultural Development in Wuhan University, analyzed scenes patterns in 31 cities, indicating that the development of megacities is accompanied by the loss of “dramatic” elements, and projects. In another presentation, Wu Jun, Associate Professor at the Beijing Administration Institute, used an analysis of 67 Chinese cities to conclude that innovation and creativity are major driving forces of urban development, and that scenes featuring self-expression can promote innovation and creativity from patents to pottery designs.

The Summit also represented the launch of the Scenes Academy, which aims to enhance cross-border cooperation among scenes analysts, to advance specific analysis of practical problems, and find new solutions by adapting ideas from nearby and around the world.

Bo and Clark cofounded the Scenes Academy with Professor Qi Ji from the School of Cultural Industries Management of the Communication University of China, Wu Jun, Associate Professor, Beijing Administration Institute, and Daniel Silver, PhD Chicago, now at the University of Toronto. The Academy’s near-term goals are to promote the use of scenes theory and methodology at the local level in China, and to facilitate global comparative analysis.

Clark notes that Scenes Academy and the Scenes Project are both open to people interested in Scenes. “Some of you are looking for PhD topics, others of you have policy problems but no money, others have money but are unsure where to invest it,” he says. “Together we see further and create more than we can alone.”