Social Disorganization Theory in Contemporary China: a Review of the Evidence and Directions for Future Research

Abstract

This paper assesses and synthesizes the cumulative results from the empirical research on social disorganization and crime-related phenomena at the neighborhood level in China. Our review identified 17 relevant quantitative, qualitative, and mixed method studies published in journals and books from the late-1990s to date. Our goal is to take stock of the cumulative knowledge to inspire future research in China, thereby advancing social disorganization theory. We synthesize the main findings about the effects of structural factors and intervening mechanisms from quantitative studies, summarize briefly conclusions from qualitative and mixed methods research to crosscheck our synthesis, and identify methodological and theoretical limitations. Our conclusions point to promising directions for future research with special attention to prospects for theory development through comparative criminological inquiry.

Introduction

According to the formulation from the classical Chicago School, social disorganization emerges when social change undermines and destroys “the authority and influence of an earlier culture and system of social control” (Park 1985:47). For the last three decades, social changes in China resulting from economic reform, an open-door policy, urbanization, and housing reform have altered the traditional system of social relations (Curran 1998) and generated increasing crime rates (Liu and Messner 2001). Criminologists have accordingly recognized the potential utility of China as a strategic setting for the application of social disorganization theory, and the empirical research has been accumulating for over two decades. When looking to the past, it is perhaps too easy to be critical of flaws in research when judged by contemporary standards. Before making this type of judgment, however, we should be mindful of the constraints on research associated with the Chinese context. Now is a propitious time to learn from both the insights and limitations of predecessors who have pioneered criminological research in China.

The Chinese case is also quite instructive about a field of long standing interest in criminology—cross-cultural research. Social disorganization theory has developed over a century in the West, yet there remains substantive and methodological deficiencies in the theoretical and empirical work (Kubrin 2009; Kubrin and Weitzer 2003; Messner and Zimmerman 2012). Conducting research beyond the Western countries can change the “parochialism of past theoretical effort,” to borrow a phrase from Bennett (1980:265), and it can enrich our knowledge about universal laws of human conduct. By traversing the national boundaries and addressing distinctive values, institutions, and practices in an alien social-cultural context, criminologists can examine the applicability of theory and get inspiration for theoretical elaborations (Liu et al. 2017:196).

The purpose of this paper is to assess and synthesize the results of the empirical studies on social disorganization theory and crime-related phenomena at the neighborhood level in China. Our overarching thesis is that insights can be extracted from these studies to help realize the promise of transforming social disorganization theory in fundamental ways. To orient our discussion, we will begin with a brief overview of social disorganization theory in the West and extant research in China. Then, we will synthesize the main findings guided by the theoretical framework of social disorganization theory. We will also identify a set of methodological and theoretical problems that limit our capacity to draw firm conclusions. Finally, we will highlight promising directions for future research.

Social Disorganization Theory in the West

The theoretical foundations of community and ecological approaches to the study of crime emerged with the classical Chicago School of sociology. Researchers identified social structural characteristics that aligned with high rates of crime and other social problems (Kornhauser 1978; Park and Burgess 1925; Shaw and Mckay 1942, 1972). The most prominent of these social structural characteristics were low economic status, high residential mobility, and high racial/ethnic heterogeneity. The Chicago School researchers concluded that the empirical associations between indicators of social structure and crime/disorder supported their theoretical claims about the effects of social disorganization, defined as the incapacity and inability of residents to implement and maintain public norms (Bursik 1988; Sampson and Groves 1989; Shaw and Mckay 1942, 1972).

A fundamental limitation of the Chicago School tradition was the confusion of the presumed outcomes of social disorganization with disorganization itself (Bursik 1988). To address this limitation, “neo” social disorganization perspectives emerged that focus on explicating the processes that link the structural characteristics of neighborhoods with crime. One approach is the systemic model formulated by Bursik and Grasmick (1993), which redefines social disorganization “as the regulatory capacity of a neighborhood that is imbedded in the structure of that community’s affliational, interactional and communication ties among its residents” (Bursik 1999: 86). The systemic model provides a theoretical framework that explicitly identifies intervening mechanisms (Kubrin and Weitzer 2003; Messner and Zimmerman 2012). This approach continues to guide Western research on social disorganization (e.g., Browning et al. 2004; Steenbeek and Hipp 2011; Wickes and Hipp 2018; Velez 2001).

The role of social ties that underpin spheres of social control as explicated in the original systemic model, however, has been challenged by findings that social ties are not inherently pro-social (e.g., Warner and Rountree 1997; Browning et al. 2004), and that weak ties can also be efficacious (e.g., Bellair 1997). To further elaborate the ways in which informal control can be built upon social networks, Bursik (1999) articulated a social capital theory that differentiates the “ties per se” and the resources transmitted through social ties. Despite critiques in the literature, variants of social capital theory continue to influence research on social disorganization (Sampson 2012; Sampson et al. 2002).

What is largely missing in the systemic model and social capital theory is the purposive action residents adopt to confront neighborhood problems (Kubrin and Weitzer 2003; Taylor 2002). This has stimulated another variant of “neo” social disorganization theory that assigns a key role to the concept of “collective efficacy.” Spearheaded by Sampson and his colleagues, collective efficacy differentiates neighborhoods with reference to the mutual trust among neighbors and their willingness to intervene for the common good (Sampson et al. 1997). Research has provided consistent supportive evidence for the effect of collective efficacy on crime at the neighborhood level (Sampson et al. 1997; Kubrin and Weitzer 2003; Sampson 2012), revealing that collective efficacy operates as a particularly important intervening mechanism that explains the effects of structural factors and social ties on crime (Morenoff et al. 2001; see Sampson 2006/2009 for a review).

Another important development in recent years has been the “process turn” in neighborhood effects research. This approach seeks to revitalize the core theoretical spirit of the Chicago School, which focused on “social structure embedded in time, a structure in process” (Abbott 1997: 1158). The “process approach” puts forth a unifying framework that links higher-order structures, neighborhoods, and the micro foundations of action, with an emphasis on elaborating “the middle range of neighborhood structures and processes that mediate and are mediated by individual and societal forces” (Sampson 2019: 9; see also Sampson 2012).

These theoretical elaborations of traditional social disorganization theory in the West have been accompanied by research findings that call for more nuanced interpretations of the structural correlates of neighborhood social control and crime. For example, concentrated poverty in some racial minority neighborhoods does not necessarily cause high crime rates because extended kinship and friendship networks within these neighborhoods often decrease residents’ motivation and opportunity to engage in delinquency and crime (Sampson et al. 2005). As another example, the prediction in classical social disorganization theory that high levels of immigration would be associated with high rates of crime has been challenged empirically. This has stimulated the emergence of the immigrant revitalization perspective, which can account for relatively low levels of crime in neighborhoods with high concentrations of immigrants (Kubrin 2009).

Theorizing and empirical research on social disorganization in the West has thus evolved considerably since the inception of this perspective in the Chicago School. Recent formulations direct attention to both features of the social structures of neighborhoods and the social processes that accompany them that are hypothesized to be conducive to crime. The research in China informed by the general social disorganization perspective has focused on these social structural conditions and concomitant processes, adapting them to the Chinese context as appropriate. We have accordingly organized our compilation of empirical findings with reference to social structural conditions and intervening processes. As our review reveals, several studies have explicitly attended to both types of variables in their statistical models.

Search Strategy

We performed a systematic search for studies that are relevant to social disorganization theory and that investigated variations in crime-related phenomena, such as criminal offenses, victimizations, and disorder across ecologically defined units of analysis (e.g., neighborhoods, streets) in China. We initially searched with keywords using the following combinations: (Abstract for social disorganization theory or social disorganization) AND (Abstract for China or Chinese) AND (Abstract for crime or offense or delinquency or victimization or disorder) at two databases that cover most of the relevant studies in sociology and criminology: Sociological Abstracts and Criminal Justice Abstracts. After conducting our review in this manner, however, we found very few empirical studies conducted in China. Moreover, this criterion excluded many studies that did not specify the theory but actually examined the phenomena of interest.

We thus cast a wider net to capture empirical studies of crime-related phenomena at the neighborhood-level in China, as long as they examined some dimensions of neighborhood characteristics or intervening social processes. First, we searched with keywords using the following combination: (Abstract for neighborhood or neighborhoods or community or communities) AND (Abstract for China or Chinese) AND (Abstract for crime or offense or delinquency or victimization or disorder) at Sociological Abstracts and Criminal Justice Abstracts. We then searched for articles published in Chinese journals in a database that includes the most comprehensive academic journal list in China: Cnki (zhongguo zhiwang) with keywords using the following combination: (Abstract/All Text for social disorganization (shehui jiezu or shehui jieti) AND (Abstract/All Text for crime or offense or delinquency or victimization or disorder (fanzui/beihai/shixu).¹ The literature search was conducted between April and July 2018. After removing duplicates and filtering articles by reading full text, we identified 9 original empirical studies in English and 4 in Chinese that meet our selection criterion. To get a comprehensive literature list, we also took advantage of the references of identified articles, and added 4 more studies published as book chapters or in other databases beyond our search scope.

Caveats

To formulate a coherent synthesis, we focus on the empirical studies conducted in Mainland China. We aimed to take stock of the cumulative knowledge generated from original empirical research that has met the rigorous standards of academic research and yielded final results, so our search scope is limited to literature published in books and academic journals, and excludes the studies in progress and those not readily available to the public, such as presentations at conferences, or working reports from administrative sources.

Taking Stock

Overview of the Extant Research

We briefly summarize the identified studies and provide an overview in Appendix 1 Table 3. From the perspectives of research sites, research design, and research questions, we can sketch a general picture of the empirical research on social disorganization and crime-related phenomena at the neighborhood-level in China.

Geographic Distribution and Temporal Change of Research

The research starts from late 1990s, the early phase of economic reform and urbanization, and then spurts in 2010s, when half of the population has been urbanized in China.² Studies are clustered in the cities mainly situated in the Eastern and Southern China. Guangzhou, the vanguard city of economic reform and open door policy, accounts for about one third of the studies.

Research Methods

Over two thirds of the studies apply quantitative methods. The survey approach is the most widely used tool to collect data, followed by existing statistics, documents, and secondary data analysis. Out of eight quantitative studies whose dependent variables are crime or victimization rates, half acquired the data from surveys, and only three from official records.

Research Focus

Based on research design and questions, the extant research can be classified into the following six categories: (a) formulating hypotheses, and directly assessing the applicability of the theory by analyzing data from surveys (Lu and Miethe 2001; Zhang et al. 2007; Jiang et al. 2010; Jiang et al. 2013; Messner et al. 2017; Zhang et al. 2017); (b) examining the spatial distribution of crime, and then assessing if the covariates identified by the theory are related to the spatial patterns (Song and Liu 2013; Liu et al. 2016; Liu and Zhu 2016); (c) comparing different types of neighborhoods, and utilizing the factors proposed by the theory to account for the differences (Zhong 2009; Xiong 2016); (d) focusing on one particular area and applying the theory to explain the phenomena of social disorganization in the area of interest (Liu 2010; Mao and Jin 2014; Cui and Shi 2017); (e) describing and assessing the neighborhood-based crime prevention programs (Situ and Liu 1996; Zhong and Broadburst 2007); and (f) using the structural covariates of social disorganization to predict crime rates and identify high risk areas (Wang et al. 2017).

Summary of Results

The spatial analyses have documented a consistent spatial pattern of crime in contemporary urban China such that crime tends to decline with increasing distance from the downtown towards the periphery in the city; it is clustered in the areas where the land is used for business and public transportation, and also concentrated in the zones in the suburbs which have just completed or are undergoing the transition from rural to urban neighborhoods. These spatial patterns in the Chinese context are in many respects similar to those in Western cities, which lends credibility to social disorganization theory.

In Tables 1 and 2, we summarize the major findings from quantitative studies, organized with reference to findings that pertain to the effects of neighborhood structural factors and neighborhood social process variables. To crosscheck our synthesis, we also summarize briefly conclusions from qualitative and mix-methods research (see Appendix 2 Table 4). We refer the reader to these tables for detailed findings of each study.

Table 1 Summary of main findings from quantitative studies—effects of structural factors

Table 2 Summary of main findings from quantitative studies—effects of social processes and other covariates

Mixed Evidence Linking Neighborhood Characteristics to Crime-Related Phenomena

The traditional structural predictors of social disorganization in the West, e.g., poverty, residential instability, and population heterogeneity (with rural migration as an analogue for racial heterogeneity in China) seem not to have the expected effects in Chinese urban neighborhoods. Even though a few quantitative studies yield results in the theoretically expected direction, the dominant pattern is that these factors do not exhibit consistent effects on outcome variables, e.g., crime, victimization, disorder. In addition, economically disadvantaged neighborhoods do not necessarily exhibit low levels of collective efficacy or informal control (social process variables).³ Furthermore, the study in Tianjin even reveals a positive effect of residential stability on burglary risks, opposite to theoretical expectations and generally reported findings in the West.

Although the quantitative research does not accord very well with predictions derived from traditional social disorganization theory, the findings from the qualitative and mixed-methods research have revealed images of neighborhood differentiation reasonably consistent with this perspective. Those studies have discovered that some structural factors, including poverty, high population turnover, rural migrants, are the plausible correlates of social disorganization processes. The spatial analyses have also identified hot spots of crime, some of which correspond to the urban areas with concentrated poverty as manifested in the Chinese context, e.g., traditional old housing areas in the city center, “urban villages” (see Wang 2004: 52–56). Some researchers focus on “urban villages” with concentrations of rural migrants after observing the extraordinarily high crime rates in those areas (e.g., Liu 2010; Cui and Shi 2017).

Besides the commonly examined structural factors, researchers have also explored other neighborhood-level covariates, e.g., political capital, education, population density, fluency of local dialect, land-use. Political capital has been found to reduce physical disorder in Tianjin, and it has been characterized as bridging social capital that benefits crime prevention programs in Shenzhen. Neighborhoods that have high levels of population density are reported to have reduced burglary risks in Wuhan, while increasing violent crime rates in Changchun. In Wenzhou, the fluency of local dialect that should have increased interaction among residents and enhanced informal control in the neighborhood unexpectedly increased victimization.⁴ Only with respect to the use of public space can we identify a preliminary pattern that commercialized land use increases victimization and crime rates.

Discoveries About “Neighborhood Effects”

Early research in Tianjin found that the neighborhood social control variables account for an appreciable proportion of the variance of crime rates across neighborhoods not explained by compositional differences and the neighborhood structural variables, demonstrating the explanatory power of neighborhood effects. Only a few following studies, however, have considered the complete range of neighborhood social processes. Most studies focus on only one facet or two. Consequently, our synthesis here is preliminary and tentative.

• A. Informal control. The effect of informal control, e.g., social ties, collective efficacy, is generally consistent with theoretical hypotheses, even though there are minor exceptions.

• B. Public control. In research conducted in the 2000s, public control has the expected negative effect, but it exhibited null effects in most cases in 2010s. Some researchers speculated that reciprocal causal processes with counterbalancing implications might account for the null effect of public control (Messner et al. 2017), and findings from qualitative and mix-method research seem to corroborate the conjecture. Increasing the presence of police in neighborhoods is a conventional measure adopted by local governments to enhance neighborhood control and fight against crime (Situ and Liu 1996; Zhong and Broadburst 2007), which means that public control is quite likely to be a response to crime in China.⁵ As time goes by, public security agencies, due to limited resources, focus more on those neighborhoods with high crime rates or severe disorder, and withdraw police officers from the neighborhoods where the public order is well maintained. Thus, residents in the well-organized neighborhoods are likely to perceive a rare presence of police (Zhong 2009; Xiong 2016).

• C. Semi-public control. The activities performed by neighborhood committees have been conceptualized as “semi-public control” (or “semiformal control”) to capture the characteristics of neighborhood governance in China. Only research in Tianjin and Guangzhou has examined its effects (Zhang et al. 2007; Jiang et al. 2013; Messner et al. 2017; Zhang et al. 2017). The results are puzzling so that we can only generate a tentative synthesis. Unexpected by researchers, some research indicates that semi-public control has no contextual effect on victimization, and it is even surprisingly positively related to perceived disorder, such as social disorder and criminal activity. Zhang et al. (2017) suspected that neighborhood committees serves as “a key ‘communication vehicle’ that is likely to spread information about neighborhood disorderly conditions and the related work/activities to residents” (p. 640).

The qualitative research concerned with neighborhood committees has yielded mixed evidence. On the one hand, community-based prevention strategies necessitate active neighborhood committees to mobilize resources and disseminate information in the neighborhoods; on the other hand, the inability of neighborhood committees to implement those programs due to financial difficulty in disorganized neighborhoods implies that inaction of neighborhood committees would exacerbate the problems in the neighborhoods. Put another way, neighborhood committees mobilized by local governments to participate in crime control programs would become active insofar as they are able to secure resources; the more actively the neighborhood committees plays its role in crime control programs, the more likely crime-related phenomena would decrease, but residents would get more information about these phenomena since neighborhood committees usually encourage residents to participate and guard the public space in the neighborhoods. However, the neighborhoods with inactive neighborhood committees due to a shortage of resources to adopt crime prevention activities would exhibit high levels of crime-related phenomena that can be perceived by residents in their daily lives, even if they do not get the information disseminated by the inactive neighborhood committees. Consequently, residents’ perceptions of crime-related phenomena are not likely to depend solely on whether the neighborhood committees are active or not. An important take-away of qualitative and mixed-methods research that examined different facets of neighborhood committees is that they are versatile in urban neighborhood governance. Since few quantitative studies have been able to test the potentially widespread effects of neighborhood committees on neighborhood social control, our knowledge about the impact of semi-public control on crime-related phenomena is limited.

• D. Market-based control. The involvement of the market in neighborhood control complicates the picture of urban governance in Chinese context. A few studies have shed light on the complexity of neighborhood control in China stimulated by the development of market-based control implemented by property management companies. Whereas market-based control has been shown to only affect physical disorder in Tianjin, the qualitative and mixed-method research in Guangzhou and Shenzhen has revealed its comprehensive impacts. The property management companies help to build gated neighborhoods and guard the places by security staff, which significantly reduces crime and victimization rates.

Tentative Conclusions

Despite the inconsistencies noted above, it is possible to draw from tentative general conclusions from the research about neighborhood social processes in urban China: (a) the observed effect of interactions among residents on enhancing informal control appears to have become weaker over time, as reflected in the contrast between older studies and those conducted more recently⁶; (b) neighborhoods with high levels of social cohesion and social capital, especially bridging capital, are likely to possess active neighborhood committees that have the capacity to implement crime control activities, which may, in turn, enhance residents’ abilities to exert informal control; (c) neighborhood-based crime prevention programs initiated by the local government and satisfactory service from the police may enhance residents’ willingness to intervene in public affairs in the neighborhoods; (d) the role of the neighborhood committee and public security agency has diminished somewhat over time due to involvement of the property management company in neighborhood social control.

Limitations

For over two decades, empirical research informed by the general social disorganization perspective has made rapid progress in China. Scholars have succeeded in collecting original data through the application of sophisticated survey designs. Some researchers have explicitly taken into account the sensitivity of the theory to the institutional context and introduced new concepts to accommodate the Chinese context (e.g., Zhang et al. 2007; Jiang et al. 2010; Jiang et al. 2013; Messner et al. 2017; Zhang et al. 2017). Despite recent progress, however, several limitations remain.

Geographic Coverage

Bursik (1988) identified some of the formidable challenges for any research informed by social disorganization theory. The collection of original data amenable to quantitative data analysis “entails a very intensive series of interviews, surveys, and/or fieldwork... The logistical and economic problems of such an approach are obvious in large metropolitan areas...Unfortunately, a full test of the model on the scale of the traditional studies will be impossible without an enormous outlay of funds for data collection by an interested funding agency” (p. 530). Information relevant to intervening neighborhood-level processes cannot be readily gained from administrative sources, and thus it usually is obtained through surveys. In China, researchers have to glean the measures of socio-demographic characteristics of residents typically available in census sources in the West from surveys due to confidentiality of most official data and administrative records in China. As a late-comer to global comparative criminology, the criminological research still develops “within the very particular regulatory context of China’s social, economic, and political trajectory,” which “provides contextual understanding and meaning for how criminological knowledge is produced” (Cao and Hebenton 2018:5). Researchers are only able to conduct empirical research where they are good at dealing with the politics of gaining access and trust with either the study population or the gatekeepers of the data because of the sensitive nature of crime and social control in China.

The extant research is clustered in the cities that possess extremely higher urbanization rates than the nationwide average.⁷The administrative experience and financial resources gained through urbanization and economic development differ across cities, and, in turn, determine the level of local governments’ involvement in neighborhood governance. Compared to other cities eager to urbanize the countryside and expand the urban territory, the municipal governments of advanced cities have begun to gentrify the neighborhoods and promoted good citizenship among the residents (e.g., Wei 2008; Yan and Deng 2014). As a result, the effects of some structural factors on outcome variables may be offset by the strong control on neighborhoods from local governments in advanced cities.⁸ Meanwhile, researchers have not had the opportunity to study the distinct ecological patterns in those cities where local governments have not focused on community construction. Even among the cities with the same level of urbanization, the variation of administrative control can also change the ecological pattern of the city that may affect the distribution of crime-related phenomena. In cities with a more open economy, e.g., Guangzhou, Shenzhen, some structural factors, such as income and socioeconomic status, may be more valid predictors for neighborhood differentiation than those in which state sectors still dominate, e.g., Beijing (Li 2005:157–160).

Units of Analysis

As shown in Appendix 1 Table 3, some studies use streets (jiedao) as units of analysis, even though their ecological units of interest are neighborhoods (Song and Liu 2013; Liu t al. 2016). In China’s urban areas, sub-district offices (jiedao banshichu) are set up as agencies of local governments of municipal districts or cities not divided into districts and are responsible for the administration of neighborhood committees within their jurisdictions.⁹ Aggregation of data to the street level has broadened the geographic scope, but it may not direct researchers to the social reality most relevant to processes of social disorganization. Whereas most studies take “neighborhood” or “community” as the stated unit of analysis, the two words may represent distinct ecological units in China. Community, shequ in Chinese, is “generally describing the territory and people under the administration of a resident or community committee” (Tomba 2014:4). It is the ecological unit of research in Shanghai (Lu and Miethe 2001), Tianjin (Zhang et al. 2007; Messner et al. 2017; Zhang et al. 2017), and Guangzhou (Jiang et al. 2010; Jiang et al. 2013). Small area (xiaoqu in Chinese), “a residential compound, either private or run by a company” (Tomba 2014:4), is the unit of analysis in Xiong’s (2016) research although she named it as neighborhood. Her field research included a xiaoqu governed by two neighborhood committees. The inconsistent use of “neighborhood” in extant research may be responsible for inconsistent and sometimes contradictory findings.

Measurement

We summarize the measurements of key concepts used by quantitative studies in Appendix 3 Table 5. The conceptualization of some key variables is ambiguous and overlapping. For example, the survey item, “residents’ interaction,” has been used to measure “neighborhood attachment” in Shanghai and “social ties” in Guangzhou. It is unclear whether researchers regarded the two as being identical in conceptual meaning, or treated them as two separate concepts with overlapping meaning. The item inconsistency may also produce uncertainty about the setting being assessed and have implications for research findings. Besides the reciprocal causal processes with counterbalancing implications noted above, we suspect that inconsistent survey instruments used to measure public control are also responsible for the mixed findings across studies. The survey items in the 2017 Tianjin research captured a broader scope of public control activities than one decade ago; how much policing and monitoring occur in the neighborhoods is definitely different from residents’ satisfaction with police and perception of police presence. Consequently, although researchers use the same concept across studies, they actually refer to different facets of public control.

Some concepts with clear meaning and consistent indicators, e.g., rural migration, residential stability, semi-public control, crime and victimization rate, are measured by survey data aggregated from individual responses. Ecological constructs need not be merely the aggregate of individual properties, and the reliance on resident reports would possibly create a “same-source” bias (Raudenbush and Sampson 1999). The uncertainty of neighborhood residents about survey research under Chinese social and political contexts may also entail a substantial proportion of “do not know” answers that affects data quality (Shen et al. 2018).

Moreover, concepts with Western operationalizations may not capture their distinct manifestations in the Chinese societal context, a point that has been recognized by scholars in the field (e.g., Zhang et al. 2007; Zhang et al. 2017). The reason why residential stability did not exhibit expected effects may be attributed to the distinct pattern of informal control in Chinese urban neighborhoods. Old neighborhoods, i.e., neighborhoods that have longer histories, may have longer traditions of activism and more experiences of solving problems, and thus are more capable of gaining support beyond neighborhood boundaries than younger neighborhoods. Considering the persistent existence of self-governance organizations and neighborhood committees that can strengthen informal control in the neighborhoods from the onset of neighborhood establishment, the traditions and experiences can be passed down to new residents and enhance residents’ sense of neighborhood identity via these organizations in a short time.¹⁰ Thus, age of neighborhoods may affect the neighborhoods’ capacity to secure resources, and, in turn, solve the problems in China’s urban neighborhoods. Aggregated survey measures of respondents’ length of residence may not accurately capture the age of neighborhoods. Although some researchers have recognized the different manifestations of key concepts, e.g., collective efficacy, in the Chinese setting (see Messner et al. 2017), the cultural influences on measurement is clearly a critically important consideration.

Comparative Criminology, Theory Development, and Directions for Future Research

When considering promising paths for future research on social disorganization processes and crime in China, it is useful situate the research with reference to overarching goals of comparative criminology. In his seminal essay, Bennett (1980) proposed two approaches that guide comparative criminological research: the “evaluative” approach and the “generative” approach. The evaluative approach seeks to determine the scope conditions of theories and their generalizability across differing socio-cultural contexts. The overarching goal of the “generative” approach, in contrast, is to use research finding about processes in highly different socio-cultural contexts to generate more general explanations that can account for scope conditions—essentially to transform theory. These dual objectives can be, and often are, pursued in tandem. Transporting theory across socio-cultural boundaries is likely to stimulate the introduction of new concepts, which has the potential to facilitate the construction of more general, more universal theories.

The inconsistent findings in the literature pertaining to traditional hypotheses of social disorganization theory and generally reported results in the West raise questions about the feasibility of simply transporting the theoretical framework from the West to China. It is clear that researchers need to expand the conceptual toolkit to understand crime within non-Western contexts (Messner 2015). Indeed, as noted above, some researchers have taken pioneering efforts to formulate and incorporate new concepts that are faithful to the social realities in Chinese society, e.g., semi-public control and distinct forms of market-based control (Jiang et al. 2013; Messner et al. 2017; Zhang et al. 2007; Zhang et al. 2017). We consider below some directions for future research that might enrich “evaluative” comparative research and further stimulate “generative” comparative research.

Neighborhood Boundaries

Even though research on social disorganization has predominantly adopted the strategy of defining neighborhoods based on Census geography in the West, researchers have become more aware of the distinct influences of ecological units at different levels (e.g., Grannis 1998; Hipp and Boessen 2013). The key concepts in the various social disorganization perspectives, e.g., social ties, collective efficacy, are emergent properties generated from residents’ daily activities in a particular geographic locale (Ren and Kwan 2009). Some dependent variables, e.g., physical disorder, can be reliably measured at lower levels of aggregation, whereas others cannot, e.g., social disorder (Raudenbush and Sampson 1999). Thus, the conceptualization of neighborhoods should match the social reality experienced by residents.

Although the unit of analysis issue has attracted much serious attention in the West, it has not received as much in China. This is unfortunate because settlement patterns in China have become increasingly complex. The housing reform has led to a rise of gated residential spaces because real estate developers have been preoccupied with selling the ideal type of life style resulting from residential segregation, and the governments can tailor the provision of social services to different populations (Tomba 2014). “Boundaries determine membership: someone must be inside and someone outside. Boundaries also delineate space to facilitate the activities and purposes of political, economic, and social life” (Blakely and Snyder 1997:1).

Residents in the residential compound (xiaoqu) hire property management companies to clean and guard the public space within the area; they watch over the spaces inside the gate, and establish self-governance associations that only consist of homeowners living in the residential compound. Thus, the micro-ecology of the residential compound may bear directly on patterns of residents’ daily interaction. However, the community (shequ), composed of several residential compounds but governed by one neighborhood committee, is the basic ecological unit on which the Chinese government builds the infrastructural power at the grass-root level (Heberer and Gӧbel 2011). Residents in the same shequ have access to the same institutional resources, even though they live in different xiaoqu. The neighborhood committee is the organization that all residents can reach out to if they have any issues about the shequ; local public security agency also assigns police officers to each shequ. The institutional processes, compared to residents’ daily interaction, operate at a larger scale.

The peculiar features of residential segregation and neighborhood governance require researchers not only to define the neighborhood boundaries carefully but also to consider the analysis at multiple scales. Different crime processes could operate simultaneously at different spatial scales. Western research has documented that many neighborhood factors operate on the micro-scale, while others seem to have a much broader impact (Boessen and Hipp 2015). Extant studies in China have identified the ecological patterns of crime at the street level and several land-use factors relevant to the patterns (Liu and Zhu 2016; Xiong 2016). Thus, it is imperative to examine the scales at which various social control processes can be best measured.

Temporal Dynamics

As recognized by Chicago School scholars, the ecological pattern of crime-related phenomena is attributed to “larger economic and social processes characterizing the history and growth of the city and the local communities which comprise it” (Shaw and Mckay 1969:14). Western scholars have developed dynamic models and initiated longitudinal research on social disorganization (e.g., Bellair 2000; Sampson et al. 2002; Kubrin and Weitzer 2003; Steenbeek and Hipp 2011; Hipp and Steenbeek 2016; Hipp and Wickes 2017). Research in China only provides a snapshot of social disorganization and neighborhood crime-related phenomena in a single, fixed time point. The difficulties of capturing social processes or change through cross-sectional research have left many questions unanswered. For example, do Chinese neighborhoods exhibit persistent inequality over time? How have the effects of residents’ interaction on informal control changed? Are there reciprocal effects between public control and crime? What are the effects of new actors, e.g., property management companies, homeowner associations, neighborhood workstations, on neighborhood social control, and how do they affect the role of neighborhood committees and public security agencies? What have transitional zones experienced during rapid social change? It would be extremely valuable for future researchers to conduct longitudinal research in the same city to observe the changes in a systematic way, or initiate cohort studies on rural migrants or residents in “urban villages” to examine how the cultural conflicts emerge, how the social change attenuated traditional culture, and whether there is an oppositional culture in the transitional zone.¹¹

Interpenetration of Levels of Social Structures

The recent Western research on neighborhood effects incorporates social interactional processes at the micro-level, the extra-local level, and the larger social order. It aims to elaborate, for example, how the social isolation of neighborhoods and patterns of higher-order segregation are produced and maintained by “homophily” manifested in everyday spatial mobility and crosscutting neighborhood networks, and how neighborhoods mediate and are mediated by the effects from the top and bottom (Sampson 2012, 2019). Attending to the interpenetration of levels of social structures is particularly important in the Chinese context but also particularly challenging.

The Chinese state has become increasingly interested in introducing and deploying market instruments in urban development following the economic and political reforms after 1980s, thereby maximizing land revenue (Hsing 2010) and reducing fiscal spending on urban development and renewal. The Chinese state, nevertheless, is still more proactive towards the agenda of urban development compared to Western countries. It plays an influential role in shaping urban affairs (Ren 2013; Wu 2010), while adjusting the ways of intervention to the rule of games that have changed under new societal circumstances. The distinction of urban space within the cities is “the result not of deregulation but of planning and the overhaul of governance strategies” (Tomba 2014:32). Housing, as a mechanism for social and spatial stratification, is also to some extent a product of inter-generational transfer of the politically privileged social class to their off-springs, and the traces of benefits from resourceful work units and household registration system (Huang and Li 2014; Li and Yi 2007; Huang and Yi 2010, 2011; Wu et al. 2006).

The practice of urban governance in China has been termed a form of “state entrepreneurialism” by urban scholars that combines planning centrality and market institutions (Wu 2018). To overcome political economic constraints caused by the higher social order of urban governance, individuals exert agency and create their own space, thereby creating informalities in Chinese urban development (Ren 2018; Wu 2018). The urban village is an example of informal settlement developed by individual agency (Ren 2018; Wu 2018). In urban villages, the disparity of culture between local residents and migrants hinder the assimilation of the latter into urban life, affect neighborhood social control, and make them breeding grounds of crime (Cui and Shi 2017; Mao and Jin 2014; Liu 2010; Xiong 2016). In this manner, the social isolation and higher-order segregation in Chinese cities are more than the result of everyday residential mobility and crosscutting neighborhood networks, but rather the result of the repetitive negotiations between state and market and the exercise of individual agencies under such negotiations.

The interpenetration of levels of social structure is thus likely to take on different forms in China than in the West. Nevertheless, clarifying this interpenetration, and more specifically explicating the interconnections among state, market, and society, is an important step in fostering a better understanding of neighborhood processes. Such an understanding can then guide the further development of new concepts, hypotheses, and empirical measures to promote “generative” research in China in the future.

Conclusion

Compared to the long history of research on social disorganization in Western countries, researchers in China started decades behind. A great deal of progress has nevertheless been achieved in a relatively short period. Advancing from relying on small numbers of personal interviews and individual field observations to applying sophisticated scientific methods at a large-scale and becoming more aware of implications of the Chinese context for applying the theory, researchers have made great strides in uncharted areas. The available research has demonstrated that a fundamental insight of the social disorganization perspective can be readily transported to China: crime-related phenomena are socially structured for territorial units in China as they are in the West. This can serve as a solid foundation for future research on social disorganization processes in Chinese cities.

Most importantly, what prior researchers have done makes our assessment and synthesis in this paper possible, and it provides a propitious opportunity to reflect on where we are, what we have done, and what we should do in the future. The accumulating knowledge of social disorganization and neighborhood crime in China generated from ongoing research will surely lay the groundwork for more advanced theoretical and empirical work on social disorganization in the future, thereby contributing greatly to the field of comparative criminology.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Table 3 Overview of extant research

Appendix 2

Table 4 Summary of main conclusions from qualitative and mixed-method research

Appendix 3

Table 5 Measurement of key concepts in quantitative research