NEIGHBORHOOD SOCIAL CONTROL AND PERCEPTIONS OF CRIME AND DISORDER IN CONTEMPORARY URBAN CHINA*

• Date: 01 August 2017
• Published date: 01 August 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12142
• Author: LENING ZHANG,SHELDON ZHANG,STEVEN F. MESSNER

NEIGHBORHOOD SOCIAL CONTROL AND

PERCEPTIONS OF CRIME AND DISORDER IN

CONTEMPORARY URBAN CHINA∗

LENING ZHANG,1STEVEN F. MESSNER,2

and SHELDON ZHANG3

1Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Saint Francis University

2Department of Sociology, State University of New York, Albany

3Department of Sociology, San Diego State University

KEYWORDS: neighborhood organization, social control, perceptions of crime and dis-

order, urban China

By drawing on the two streams of Western literature on “neighborhood effects”

and perceptions of neighborhood disorder adapted to the distinctive organizational

infrastructure of neighborhoods in contemporary urban China, we examine the con-

textual effects of different forms of neighborhood social control (i.e., collective efficacy,

semipublic control, public control, and market-based control) on different types of

perceived disorder (i.e., criminal activity, social disorder, physical disorder, and total

disorder) across neighborhoods. The analyses are based on data collected in the year

2013 from a survey of approximately 2,500 households in 50 neighborhoods across

the city of Tianjin. Collective efficacy as a form of informal control has a significant

effect only for perceived social disorder. Public control as measured by the activities

of neighborhood police stations has a significant contextual effect on all forms of per-

ceived disorder, whereas the role of market-based control as represented by contracted

community services is limited to perceived physical disorder. Finally, semipublic con-

trol as measured by the activities of neighborhood committees significantly affects all

forms of perceived disorder, but the direction of the effect is positive. We interpret this

positive effect with reference to the complex processes surrounding the “translation”

of neighborhood disorderly conditions into perceptions of disorder.

A key development in criminology over the course of the past few decades has been

the resurgence of interest in “neighborhood effects” to understand disorderly condi-

tions, including criminal activity (Sampson, Morenoff, and Gannon-Rowley, 2002). As

Skogan (2012: 174; 2015) has observed, the accumulated evidence is difficult to summa-

rize succinctly because the concept of disorder encompasses a wide range of concrete

∗Additional supporting information can be found in the listing for this article in the Wiley Online

Library at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/crim.2017.55.issue-3/issuetoc.

This article is based on research supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant

1126175. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those

of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. We

wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

Direct correspondence to Lening Zhang, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Saint

Francis University, Loretto, PA 15940 (e-mail: lzhang@francis.edu).

C2017 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12142

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 55 Number 3 631–663 2017 631

632 ZHANG, MESSNER, & ZHANG

phenomena, and varying techniques have been employed to measure disorder, including

surveys, official statistics, and field observations (see also Kubrin, 2008).1A good deal of

research has been conducted in the tradition of the Chicago School and has been aimed

at examining the extent to which various forms of neighborhood social controls, and

especially informal controls, operate to reduce the prevalence of disorderly conditions

(Messner and Zimmerman, 2012). Study findings have also demonstrated that the link-

ages between conditions of disorder in neighborhoods and perceptions of them are com-

plex. Residents within the same neighborhood report varying levels of disorder, and this

variation is systematically related to the characteristics of both individuals and neighbor-

hoods (Hipp, 2010; Latkin et al., 2009; Sampson and Raudenbush, 2004; Wallace, 2015;

Wallace, London, and Fornango, 2015).

The purpose of the present analysis is to explore the effects of different forms of neigh-

borhood social control on perceptions of disorderly conditions with data from contempo-

rary urban China. Urban China offers a particularly instructive context for assessing the

generalizability of prior research because Chinese neighborhoods assume a different form

than they do in Western cities. In the West, identifying neighborhoods for research pur-

poses has proven to be difficult mainly because neighborhoods have no official or formal

status. The situation in urban China is different. Neighborhoods are formalized units of

social organization that are managed by officially recognized “neighborhood committees”

(J¨

uWeiHui).As a result, the organizational infrastructure of neighborhoods significantly

differs from that of Western communities, which provides a valuable opportunity to assess

the generalizability of Western concepts and theories of neighborhood effects.

Neighborhood committees embody the ideological commitment to create and sustain

order in accordance with the central political regime by means of the “mass line” or

“relying on the masses” (Zhong, 2009: 111; see also Read and Chen, 2008; Tang and

Parish, 2000; Whyte and Parish, 1984). Neighborhood committees coordinate their activ-

ities closely with the local city government. Accordingly, the neighborhood committees

cannot be readily characterized as either public agencies or private civic organizations,

and they thus straddle the conceptual boundaries that are widely applied in Western re-

search. The control that neighborhood committees exercise is best conceptualized as a

form of “semiformal” or “semipublic” control (Jiang, Land, and Wang, 2013; L. Zhang,

Messner, and Liu, 2007a). They also work closely with neighborhood police stations,

which are the police agencies at the neighborhood level that engage in a distinctively

Chinese style of community policing, exerting a form of public control.

The economic reform and the “open-door policy” implemented in the early 1980s

have changed dramatically the urban context within which neighborhood committees

and neighborhood police stations operate in urban China. Neighborhoods in urban China

have become much more differentiated as the rapid construction of residential units has

transformed the built environment and as city residents have become increasingly able

1. In the Western literature, “disorder” is sometimes conceptualized as distinct from “crime,” and in-

deed much theorizing and research have investigated the possibility that disorder might be a cause

of crime (e.g., Sampson and Raudenbush, 1999; Skogan, 1990; Wilson and Kelling, 1982). This con-

ceptual distinction is not clear cut, however, because some conditions that are regarded as disorder

are in fact illegal and thus criminal, whereas others are not (Skogan, 2012). As a linguistic conve-

nience, we use the terms “disorderly conditions” and “disorder” in the general sense to include

more conventional crimes along with disorder as commonly understood.

SOCIAL CONTROL AND DISORDER IN URBAN CHINA 633

to use household resources and human capital to sort themselves into neighborhoods

through a housing market that is more open than it was in the past (White, Wu, and Chen,

2008). In addition, new forms of market-based controls have emerged through the pur-

chase of contracted services. Within an emerging body of Chinese literature, researchers

have identified some of the major challenges to the traditional roles of neighborhood

committees and local policing in transitional urban China (e.g., Li, 2002; Li and Chen,

2008; Wang, 2010; Yan, 2009; G. Zhang, 2010; Zhou, 2009).

Our principal objectives are to contrast the effects of the “semipublic” control exer-

cised by the neighborhood committees with the main forms of neighborhood control that

have been the focus of much Western research—informal control (manifested as “collec-

tive efficacy”) and formal control (reflected in local law enforcement activity). We also

consider a form of neighborhood control that reflects new developments in urban China

stimulated by the economic reform, market-based control in the form of purchased (or

contracted) services. We incorporate controls for individual-level characteristics into our

statistical models that might be related to variation in perceptions of disorderly condi-

tions within neighborhoods, along with a proxy measure for disorderly conditions (i.e.,

survey-reported criminal victimization within the neighborhood).

WESTERN RESEARCH ON NEIGHBORHOOD SOCIAL

CONTROL AND PERCEPTIONS OF CRIME AND DISORDER

As noted, two streams of criminological research on disorder have evolved in the

West—the “neighborhood effects” research and research on the “problematizing” of

disorder (Hipp, 2010; Wallace, London, and Fornango, 2015). The “neighborhood ef-

fects” literature has been built off of the early studies of the Chicago School, in which

researchers documented the ecological patterning of disorderly behaviors within urban

areas and linked social structural characteristics such as residential mobility, ethnic/racial

heterogeneity, and low economic status to levels of disorder via the concept of “social

disorganization” (Kornhauser, 1978; Shaw and McKay, 1942). Contemporary research

within the “neo” social disorganization perspective has been focused on explicating the

processes that link the structural characteristics of neighborhoods with various forms of

disorderly conditions. One approach, the “systemic model,” comprises placing empha-

sis on the central role played by social ties (Bursik and Grasmick, 1993). According to

the design of this approach, the structural foundations for strong neighborhood social

organization and social control are the breadth and the depth of the ties among neigh-

bors. The results of empirical studies have provided some support for the systemic model

(e.g., Sampson and Groves, 1989), although the relationships between indicators of neigh-

borhood social ties and manifestations of disorder have proven to be complex (see, e.g.,

Bellair, 1997; Browning, Feingberg, and Dietz, 2004; Patillo, 1998).

Another particularly influential line of inquiry in Western research on “neighborhood

effects” has involved applying the concept of “collective efficacy.” Collective efficacy is a

higher order theoretical construct that combines shared expectations among neighbors

for informal control with key elements of social cohesion—trust and mutual support

(Sampson, 2006: 152; see also Sampson, 2012). Neighborhoods characterized by a high

degree of collective efficacy are those in which residents trust one another, support one

another, and are confident that fellow neighbors will act collectively to solve common