Abstract
This article approaches the question of Anglo-American hegemony in urban studies by examining publication and citation patterns. The past one or two decades have witnessed critical arguments about how knowledge production in social sciences is characterised by centre–periphery relations, and risks universalising US–American and European knowledge and epistemology. While not much systematic analysis has been done to address the extent to which urban knowledge has been shaped by Anglo-American centrism, it is not difficult to tell that the field is dominated by the Anglophone world in terms of authorship, institutional affiliation, the cities under scrutiny, and the urban theories arising. This article undertakes systematic analysis by collecting papers published between 1990 and 2010, in journals indexed by the categories ‘Geography’ and ‘Urban Studies’ in the ISI Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) database. We develop a series of analyses by examining the sites of knowledge production, contributors, key research interests, and the circulation/impact of works. We also single out research on urban China to explore questions such as the place of research on non-Anglo-American contexts in international forums. In all, this article argues that the dominant position of the Anglophone world in the production and circulation of urban knowledge is clearly discernible. But the Anglophone dominance does not necessarily mean that other research interests and orientations have not found a footing. Instead, we suggest that the growing but still small niche of urban China research presents tremendous opportunities for generating cross-context dialogues. The potential has not been fully delivered, as yet.
Introduction
We live in a world where urban dwellers make up a larger proportion of the world’s population than rural inhabitants. Cities and towns are not just residential sites, but integral to economic production, distribution and consumption, and shape (and are shaped by) social life, cultural expression and political power. This is true of highly industrialised countries as well as developing countries. Some even assert that cities dominate our economies and the experience of social life (Paddison, 2001). Looking ahead, the number of urban residents and the importance of urban places are set to increase. Understanding the nature of the urban, and developing a vastly expanded repository of knowledge on cities across the globe, has perhaps never been more urgent and important.
The study of cities and towns appropriately engages much of humanities and social sciences. Study of the city, namely, ‘urban studies’, is broad and interdisciplinary. It is impossible to strictly outline the disciplinary boundaries of academic knowledge on cities. The very capaciousness of this field means that it is so profoundly implicated in the conventions, institutions and politics of knowledge production. This article takes up an issue in urban research that is worth more reflection than it has hitherto been given, namely, the uneven spatiality of production and circulation of knowledge on cities and the lingering phantom of Anglo-American hegemony.
In recent years, volumes on urban studies and its development as a field – handbooks, readers, textbooks, progress reports, and state-of-the-art reviews – have appeared regularly. It is not difficult to tell that English-language materials are dominated by the Anglophone world in terms of authorship and the institutions that these authors are from, especially the UK and USA. Concurrently, there is a second way in which the literatures are dominated by the Anglophone world; that is, the cities under scrutiny, the urban theories arising, and the conceptions of the ‘city’ are all largely anchored in Anglo-American contexts, while the rest of the Anglophone world is also more represented than non-Anglophone societies. Prima facie, therefore, knowledge on cities appears to be Anglo-centric in character.
This Anglo-American hegemony in urban studies may be contextualised within the larger landscapes of knowledge production in ‘mainstream’ social sciences. The past one or two decades have witnessed the proliferation of critical voices arguing that the knowledge production in social sciences is contingent on geopolitical orders and the power hierarchies conditioned by the modern world-system (Wallerstein, 1997). There is a centre–periphery relation in intellectual activities (Keim, 2011), which is defined on the basis of ‘the continuing, in some respects even increasing dominance of US-American and (West) European knowledge production’ (Çelik et al., 2014: 5).
One foremost consequence of this centre–periphery hierarchy is the universalisation of some epistemologies and intellectual traditions, which usually stem from Europe or North America, while obfuscating the historical contingencies and contexts of any ensemble of questions and ideas (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1999). Critics have attacked the varied versions of universalist claims to knowledge, be it Eurocentrism, Anglo-American hegemony or simply US dominance (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1999; Chakrabarty, 2000; Chow and de Kloet, 2014).
Adding to this observed inequality is the fact that, in a global age, knowledge is now less about explaining locally situated issues and phenomena, but more and more in mobility and ‘circulation’ – indeed, ‘knowledge does not only circulate, but is also produced in circulation’ (Çelik et al., 2014: 5). Yet, circulation usually takes place among intellectual communities occupying unequal positions within international scholarly circuits. Despite the expansion of research and education in emerging economies (such as China, India, Brazil and others), it is still easier to imagine them to be at the receiving, rather than the producing end, of knowledge. A corollary of this view is that Western hegemony is not only economic and political, but intellectual and educational (Mignolo, 2002). As Chow and de Kloet (2014) and Mignolo (2014) pointedly argue, the spectre of the ‘West’ disciplines the ways in which non-Western scholars think and narrate, resulting in ‘captive minds’ that depend on the epistemic universe of the powerful.
There are, therefore, arguments urging social sciences to radically ‘provincialise’ its knowledge production (Chakrabarty, 2000). In sociology, commentators have been advocating the ‘indigenisation’ of knowledge and the recognition of theoretical and epistemological constructions emerging from the intellectual ‘peripheries’ (Bhambra, 2014). Even more provocative proposals include the suggestion of ‘learning from the periphery’ (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2012), or the warning that we should be wary of Western scholars taking the lead in producing knowledge on the non-West, lest the project of de-Westernisation is to be re-Westernised (Mignolo, 2014). In a different vein, those not content with the idea of indigenising knowledge have deliberated on the potentially productive nature of inbetweenness (Bunnell et al., 2005; Simonsen, 2002), and suggested that straddling the borders between different intellectual traditions helps to avoid parochialism and retreat to local knowledge at the expense of dialogue and comparison (Chow and de Kloet, 2014).
While the extent to which knowledge production reproduces Anglo- or Eurocentrism varies a great deal between social sciences disciplines, this problem is arguably more relevant to intellectual activities that are more sensitive to, and contingent on, local contexts (e.g. research in sociology, anthropology, geography, urban studies, cultural studies, more so than, say, psychology). Some insights can be drawn from human geography, a ‘cousin’ discipline of urban studies, where impassioned debates have already emerged, pointing out that Eurocentrism in geography is mainly in the form of Anglo-American hegemony. An overarching argument is that what we refer to as ‘international’ publication outlets, especially those indexed by the Thomson Reuters ISI databases, are in fact not at all international.
First, publications in international journals reflect geographical biases. Not only are contributors predominantly based in UK and US institutions, but the mainstream debates also tend to address Anglo-American contexts and problems (Aalbers, 2004; Yeung, 2001). Professional journals are mostly edited, refereed and published by Anglo-American academics and publishers, who act as gatekeepers disciplining and policing the extent to which alternative epistemologies and thoughts are presented (Kitchin, 2005). Beyond Anglo-American dominance, it is the rest of the Anglophone world (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and to a lesser extent, Hong Kong and Singapore, etc.) that has a relatively competitive edge in engaging with mainstream debates (Gutiérrez and López-Nieva, 2001). As Minca (2000: 287) has compellingly contended, ‘the boundaries as well as the rules/coordinates of what passes for “international” debate within our discipline are determined from within the Anglo-American universe’.
The second reason for Anglo-American hegemony is the use of English as the lingua franca of international academic publishing. This linguistic dominance not only excludes scholars not versed in English, but also means that the scholarships not published in English only reach out to a limited audience, while Anglophone research gains more currency as ‘universal’ theories and knowledge (Garcia-Ramon, 2003; Peake, 2011). Even if scholars whose native languages are not English make it to the international publishing space, the theoretical and analytical narratives tend to be framed within Anglo-American debates and literatures, raising questions about the translatability and interchangeability of terminologies and ideas used in different communities of knowledge (Aalbers, 2004; Simonsen, 2002).
Third, contributions from non-Anglo-American authors to international journals are more likely to be viewed as exotic and interesting local cases, supplying empirical materials only ‘for later breakdown, synthesis and summary by British and American geographers’, in the latter’s endeavours of theoretical constructions and elaborations (Bański and Ferenc, 2013: 286; Berg and Kearns, 1998; Vaiou, 2003).
Finally, the neoliberal move towards benchmarking academic institutions according to productivity and market competitiveness has further reinforced the hegemony of ‘international’ journals, as sole indicators of ‘best’ quality and ‘world-class’ status (Paasi, 2005, 2015). The enormous pressure to publish in English-language journals, unsurprisingly, obliges the ‘peripheries’ of knowledge to adapt to the intellectual claims made by the ‘cores’.
This study
This article argues that while the critiques of Eurocentrism and Anglo-American hegemony generate strong momentums in disrupting the ‘intellectual involution’ (Yeung, 2002: 2100) of social sciences, recent developments in areas such as urban studies and human geography nonetheless prompt us to rethink the dichotomy of centre–periphery. More sensitivity is needed to attend to the ways in which scholars from diverse intellectual traditions adjust to, but also disrupt, Anglo-American hegemony. A slippage in the deployment of terminology is to equate Anglophone scholarships with scholarships of Anglophone countries. In fact, however, it is nowadays more likely than ever for Anglo-American or, broadly, Western scholars to step out of the comfort zones of knowledge production, and develop research projects which examine non-Western contexts not merely as case studies to be explained by Eurocentric theories. Concomitantly, it is widely recognised, at least in principle, that contributions from scholars based in ‘peripheries’ of knowledge production are to be welcomed by international journals (although meeting the criteria of scholarly ‘excellence’ risks re-privileging Western thoughts and epistemologies). Finally, a growing group of academics work across boundaries between different intellectual traditions, such as scholars native to developing countries but employed by Anglo-American institutions. The existence of ‘inbetween’ intellectuals renders the binary of centre–periphery less applicable than a discourse of hybridity.
Based on these observations, this article draws a few points of view to develop a less dichotomous perspective to reflect on the indisputable existence of Anglo-American bias in urban studies, while keeping attentive to how this bias is being responded to, and sometimes bypassed and transcended. These points help to nuance an otherwise one-sided portrayal of Anglo-American hegemony:
While Anglo-American hegemony can still be observed in human geography and urban studies, for sure, the situation is gradually changing. In international journals, the share of contributions from outside the Anglophone world is on the rise (Rodríguez-Pose, 2006). Concurrently, the coverage of regional contexts is diversifying, as the journals become more aware of, and receptive to ‘non-white knowledge’ (Derudder, 2011; Peake, 2011). In fact, recent years have witnessed an exponential increase in publications focusing on, for example, China, India, and Southeast Asia.
The risk of international journals addressing predominantly the Anglo-American contexts has been recognised through new critical interventions. In urban studies, the need to acknowledge ‘urban theories beyond the West’ (Edensor and Jayne, 2012), and to use them to problematise and reshape theoretical agendas, is widely advocated. The project of provincialising Western urban theories is without question on the agenda (Derickson, 2015; Sheppard et al., 2013). This has escalated in the popularisation of postcolonial urban theories and comparative urbanism. At the centre of the agenda are the arguments that urban scholars need to challenge core Western assumptions such as modernity (Robinson, 2004), and that studies must keep sight of local difference and uniqueness, while resisting the temptations of exoticising and parochialising (McFarlane and Robinson, 2012; Ren and Luger, 2015; Robinson, 2014).
During the past few decades, diverse intellectual communities, whose members research non-Western contexts but participate in international journals as forums of communication, have been formed (Aalbers and Rossi, 2007; Peake, 2011). We have in mind, for instance, the quickly enlarging cohort of urban China scholars whose works make increasingly customary appearances in Anglophone journals. Sensitive to local debates and contexts, these scholars are often involved in the formation of national intellectual circles, and do not merely act as conveyors and spokespersons for Western theories.
Mindful of these recent developments, this article attempts to approach the question of Anglo-American hegemony in urban studies by examining publication and citation patterns. We do so through building a database that consists of urban-related papers published between 1990 and 2010, and in journals indexed by the categories of ‘Geography’ and ‘Urban Studies’ in the ISI Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) database (as of 2015). 1 Based on the bibliographical information contained in the database, we develop a series of analyses to unpack to the extent to which knowledge on cities has been ‘internationalised’ in terms of contributors, sites of knowledge production, research topics, and citation patterns.
To avoid losing sight of the internal nuances submerged by these analyses, we single out the research on urban China, a fast-growing niche within urban studies, as a point of entry into important questions such as: (1) the place of research on non-Western or non-Anglo-American contexts in international publishing outlets; (2) the attention that emerging powers such as China have received; and (3) the exchange of knowledge and ideas between the intellectual ‘core’ and alternative intellectual circles. Overall, based on findings from our data analysis, this article argues that the dominance of the Anglophone world in production and circulation of urban knowledge manifests itself in very explicit ways. In terms of both productivity and impact, the discipline is largely shaped by Anglophone countries, a small cohort of Anglophone institutions, and an elite of high-impact, in most cases Anglo-American, authors. But diverging from the more pessimistic accounts reviewed above, this article also argues that the Anglo-American dominance does not necessarily mean that other research interests and orientations have been suppressed and stifled. Drawing from the case of urban China scholarship, we suggest that the growing but still small niche of urban China research is a totally legitimate subarea within urban studies, although its potential of breeding cross-context dialogues has not been fully delivered.
Methods
In this section, we provide a brief explanation of the sources of data and methods of analysis utilised in this study, as well as the limitations of the approach that we adopt. Publications examined in this paper were collected using the ISI Web of Science (WoS) database, and the types of articles include research articles, review articles, and proceedings, 2 but exclude editorials, book chapters, book reviews, etc. Bibliographic information and citation records of each article were downloaded for analysis. The database that resulted consists of two parts. On the one hand, because all research published in the category ‘Urban Studies’ is, by default, urban knowledge, we simply collected all articles published between 1990 and 2010, from the 39 journals indexed in this category. On the other hand, to excavate urban knowledge from the wider discipline of geography, we used a variety of keywords 3 to select articles from the 76 journals in the category ‘Geography’. In total, 20,394 articles from ‘Urban Studies’ and 8988 articles from ‘Geography’ were selected into the database. Within this aggregate of articles, we used ‘China’ as the keyword to single out a sub-database that approximates what may be called ‘urban China studies’. There were five journals indexed in both categories at the time of search, namely, European Planning Studies, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Landscape and Urban Planning, Urban Geography, and Urban Policy and Research.
The database is analysed by utilising the software package Histcite. Histcite is a toolkit developed by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), the very institution that created the citation indexes. It is used for bibliometric analyses, i.e. the mining of bibliographic information to systematically illustrate, in graphic formats, the publication and citation patterns. 4 Overall, the functions provided by Histcite enable us to undertake two strands of analyses: (1) the ‘productivity’ of authors, institutions and countries, calculated by way of the quantities of articles published; (2) the ‘impacts’ and consumption of knowledge, in terms of the authors, institutions and countries that are the most heavily cited, and the works that cite specific articles (as recorded by WoS). 5 The collections of ‘Geography’ articles and ‘Urban Studies’ articles are analysed separately.
Before we proceed to present the findings, we would like to acknowledge some limitations in our methodology. First, the selection of articles excludes urban knowledge from many other categories listed in the WoS Social Sciences Citation Index. They include anthropology, area studies, cultural studies, economics, planning and development, political science, political administration, sociology, transportation, among others. The choice of concentrating on ‘Geography’ and ‘Urban Studies’ is mainly because these disciplines are the ones with which the authors are the most familiar, and the desire to contribute to the debate about knowledge production within our disciplines. This article, in this sense, only presents partial evidence of the Anglo-American hegemony in the production of urban knowledge; explorations in other academic fields may be pursued by subsequent works.
Second, the reliance on citation records requires important caveats. If citations are the ‘most objectified of the indices of symbolic capital’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 76, in Paasi, 2015: 513), they constitute relations of uneven power between scholars. A Matthew effect may be true to citation patterns, as ‘influential’ articles and authors become ever more likely to be cited, overshadowing potential contributions of other works (Foster et al., 2007). Meanwhile, the decision of which article to cite or not cite is not as rational as the highly standardised formats of the Citation Indexes might imply. An amalgam of factors – access to literatures, the editorial and copyediting processes, the wish to pander to prestigious figures or small circles, etc. – all make an influence on our reference lists. Besides, a proper reading of citation data requires sensibility to contexts – some ‘hotter’ fields and topics have larger citation networks but not necessarily superior scholarly qualities (Yeung, 2002). Without being oblivious to these pitfalls, and without canonising high-impact articles, we nonetheless admit that citation data seem to be the most systematic, straightforward instrument available to us for measuring the contours and dynamics of knowledge circulation.
Finally, it is well known that WoS includes predominantly English-language journals. 6 Given that there is a plethora of national intellectual traditions that do not record knowledge in English, any study that depends solely on WoS data results in a partial representation of the field in question (Schuermans et al., 2010). Nevertheless, for those of us who try to establish a voice in the ‘international’ publishing space, WoS profoundly shapes our understandings of the contours of the disciplines, and, as the pragmatist stance of Rodríguez-Pose (2004) suggests, it is probably still the principal zone in which cross-context dialogue and exchange are plausible, and likely to occur.
Publication and citation pattern in urban geography/urban studies, 1990–2010
We begin with an analysis of authorship patterns. Table 1 shows that 25.55% of articles in Geography have at least one author based in a US institution, followed by the UK, which claims 20.77% of the articles. 7 The figures are, respectively, 40.42% and 12.88% in Urban Studies. Given that the total number of articles originating from a US or UK institution is around 45% and 53% respectively, the leading positions of the USA and UK are clear. If we divide the timespan of the study into two periods (1990–2000 and 2000–2010), the sum share of the USA and UK has been stable but slightly declining (52.07% and 47.07% in Geography; 58.60% and 49.59% in Urban Studies). However, if we take into account other Anglophone countries that are also forerunners on the lists, such as Canada (7.84% in Geography and 4.80% in Urban Studies, 1990–2010) and Australia (5.30% in Geography and 2.85% in Urban Studies, 1990–2010), the dominant role of the Anglophone world in producing the majority of knowledge on cities is indisputable.
The 20 most productive countries in Geography and Urban Studies, 1990–2010.
Nonetheless, compared with Gutiérrez and López-Nieva (2001), who found that the Anglophone world took up more than 80% of knowledge production in major human geography journals, urban research has accommodated a greater diversity of intellectual outputs in terms of the provenance of articles. Countries in Continental Europe (such as the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain and Italy) and developed or emerging economies in Asia (Singapore, China, Israel and Japan), have all shaped the contours of knowledge by contributing a notable, albeit still small, proportion of articles. A telling example is the contribution made by scholars based in China (not including Hong Kong and Taiwan). From 1990 to 2000, authors from Mainland China contributed just 25 articles to Geography and 54 to Urban Studies, while the numbers increased geometrically to 242 and 376 for the period of 2000–2010.
An examination of the most productive institutions and authors adds further nuance to the appraisal of Anglophone hegemony in urban knowledge production. If we look at the top 50 institutions in terms of the numbers of articles published in, respectively, Geography and Urban Studies journals, a stark picture emerges, pointing to the persistent and entrenched dominance of Anglophone institutions as the most ‘active’ sites of knowledge production – mainly those based in the USA (16 and 36), the UK (22 and 7) and Canada (6 and 2) (Table 2). Although the respective shares of the three countries fluctuated a little through the first and second decades of the period of study, this collective dominance has hardly changed. 8 In particular, US institutions demonstrate an overwhelming, if not monopolising, presence in the category of ‘Urban Studies’, although trailing the UK slightly in ‘Geography’. In fact, eight US universities are among the top ten institutions in Urban Studies. Given the strong association of urban studies with US scholarly traditions, which set in place the more or less ‘standard’ discourses of urban modernity and postmodernity (reflected by the Chicago and Los Angeles Schools), it may be postulated that what we call ‘international’ urban knowledge is in fact largely internal to intellectual debates in the USA (to a lesser extent, UK and Canada). That said, beyond an overwhelming Anglophone dominance, alternative voices have not been entirely tranquilised. Scholars from the National University of Singapore and the University of Hong Kong, to name two notable examples, have been known for concentrating on dissecting Asian urbanisms in the contexts of rapid development and urbanisation. Making into the top-50 lists are also Dutch universities, especially the University of Amsterdam and Utrecht University.
The 50 most productive institutions in Geography and Urban Studies, 1990–2010.
In parallel, Table 3 presents the top 50 authors in terms of the numbers of publications. If we trace the latest institutional affiliations of these authors (as of 2010), it is found that this cohort of the most ‘active’ knowledge producers are characterised by no less remarkable Anglo-American, and broadly, Anglophone bias. In Geography, the UK takes the lead by being the base of 14 authors, followed by the USA, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and Hong Kong. Combined, the Anglophone world (USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) is home to 36 of the 50 most productive authors. In Urban Studies, the USA alone claims 36 of the top 50 authors, partly due to the strong publishing momentum of those specialising in real estate, housing, land use, land policy, urban economics, econometrics analysis, etc. In total, scholars from Anglophone countries (in this list, USA, UK and Canada) occupy 40 places in the Urban Studies top-50 list.
The 50 most productive authors in Geography and Urban Studies, 1990–2010.
Some nuances, however, are worth noting. In particular, while it is impossible to quantify research interests of scholars, suffice it to say that scholars based in Anglophone countries do not necessarily restrict their research to the same national contexts. For example, Fulong Wu, Mei-Po Kwan, and Cindy Fan are ethnic Chinese who are based in Anglo-American institutions but focus, at least partly, on China. As we mentioned earlier, ‘inbetween’ academics of this kind act as key mediators of knowledge production and exchange, a point to which we will return when we discuss knowledge production on urban China.
A different lens via which to scrutinise the power relations of knowledge production is the ‘impact’ exerted by published articles, estimated in this study by citation data. 9 We start by looking at the geographical distribution of citations, conceived of as the number of citations that each country has garnered. The pattern is in a similar vein to that emerging from the previous analyses – the USA and UK sit at the top of the lists (USA has a share of 34.40% of total citations in Geography and 43.26% in Urban Studies; UK takes 29.91% in Geography and 17.04% in Urban Studies). If we decompose the data to the two periods of 1990–2000 and 2000–2010, it appears that the sum share of the USA and UK is steadily, though slowly, declining (in Geography, from 67.37% to 63.22%; in Urban Studies, from 65.55% to 56.69%). Meanwhile, the ‘second-tier’ countries (Canada, the Netherlands, China, Australia, Germany) each claim a visible, yet much smaller share (at least 2% but no more than 8%, 1990–2010). Institutions receiving the most citations are congruent with the general tendency of concentrating in the Anglophone world.
Table 4 reveals the 50 most heavily cited articles in Geography and Urban Studies, respectively. By looking at the institutional affiliations of first authors of the articles, it is discernible that high-impact articles emerged predominantly from the powerful trinity of UK, USA and Canada (41 articles in Geography and 44 in Urban Studies), while contributions from continental Europe and China also make a modest presence. Even if we expand our analysis to include the 500 most cited articles in Geography and Urban Studies, the pattern of citations which we have sketched so far will still apply. This prompts us to argue that high-impact and agenda-setting works tend to be more expressive of Anglo-American hegemony in urban knowledge circulation.
The 50 most cited articles in Geography and Urban Studies, 1990–2010.
An interpretation of the topics addressed by high-impact articles, however, requires more caution, as nowadays many phenomena do not sit easily within the confines of nation-states, owing to heightened intensities of knowledge transfer and policy mobility at the global scale. Putting aside the articles more oriented towards physical sciences approaches, high-impact articles address a diversity of theoretical questions. Among them, some topics, such as post-industrial urban economy, multicultural cities, the ‘end’ of public space, and social cohesion/capital in neighbourhoods, are probably more specific to Anglo-America or Western contexts. Issues in urban planning, such as urban sprawl, compact cities, multi-centred city-regions, collaborative planning, etc., are also highly susceptible to local socioeconomic contexts and political cultures. In contrast, for other theoretical debates, such as neoliberalism, creative class and cities, gentrification, social construction of scale, new regionalism, globalisation, and urban governance, the contextual boundaries are blurred at best, not only because of recent developments such as the ‘heading-south’ of neoliberalism and revanchism (e.g. Swanson, 2007), but the interlinked and interlocked nature of global economy itself (Wyly, 2015). Also, Robinson’s (2002) paper advocating the reconceptualisation of the city in terms of its ‘ordinariness’ is the 27th most cited paper in Geography and 33rd in Urban Studies. In this sense, to say that the theoretical debates advanced by Anglo-American authors are solely to address Anglo-American contexts is probably an oversimplified view. Nonetheless, the dominance of Anglo-American academics in developing theoretical perspectives and discourses which are potentially pertinent to contexts beyond their native countries cannot be denied.
Table 5 lists the 50 authors who are the most heavily cited. The composition of this ensemble of the most ‘popular’ scholars is generally comparable with that of the most productive ones. The USA and UK together claim 38 and 40 places, respectively, in Geography and Urban Studies. Of the top 20 high-impact scholars in each category, only 3 and 2 are based outside the USA–UK nexus, respectively. Similar to what occurs to the most productive authors, the picture is made slightly less monolithic by a group of scholars based in the USA or the UK but reach out to other contexts. For example, Fulong Wu ranks 6th in Geography and garnered more citations than any other in Urban Studies. Although our data only provide an approximation of realities, the success of Wu as a specialist on China tells a story that problematises a rigid rhetoric of Anglo-American hegemony. The appointment of Wu to the esteemed Bartlett Chair in Urban Planning, University College London, echoes this viewpoint. Nonetheless, the point must be made that in general the Anglophone academia has been effective in shaping the ways in which the field knows itself, by setting the parameters of knowledge production and transfer.
The 50 most cited authors in Geography and Urban Studies, 1990–2010.
A different perspective to gauge the consumption of knowledge is via the lens of the works that have actually cited a set of articles. Because the bibliographic information downloaded from WoS don’t include the citing articles, which understandably form a much larger body of data than the cited ones, we use the 100 most cited articles in Geography and Urban Studies as a subset of the database, and collected all works that cited the articles at question. 10 Overall, the consumption of citations, it seems to us, creates a slightly more internationalised dynamic of knowledge exchange than the cited articles. In a sense, the ‘outbound’ flow of knowledge is still largely channelled within the Anglophone core (in Geography and Urban Studies, the USA and UK combined did 48.77% and 47.29% of acts of citing, respectively). But the shares of countries such as China and the Netherlands in citations are higher than their respective contributions to knowledge (China: 7.10% and 7.13%; the Netherlands: 5.56% and 5.30%). This is understandable because demonstrating familiarity with a corpus of literatures is a precondition to publishing in the same forums. In fact, the Chinese Academy of Sciences is the single most active citing institution (5th in Geography and 4th in Urban Studies) outside the USA–UK nexus. In terms of the most active citing authors, the entries on the lists are modestly more diverse, with authors from Continental Europe and Asia taking 9 places of the top 20 in Geography, and 10 in Urban Studies. It is reasonable to say that the consumption of urban knowledge for scholars outside the Anglophone core is disproportionately large, in comparison to the activeness of production.
Urban China research: Reproducing Anglo-American hegemony?
During the past two or three decades, urban China studies has received increasing recognition in the international publishing space, evidenced by the rapid growth of articles published in ISI-indexed journals and the enhanced participation of scholars based in China in international journals. Urban China scholars now constitute a vibrant and growing intellectual community, and the area is maturing quickly. Of course, hitherto our findings have not painted an optimistic picture for a small niche such as urban China studies, because the analysis of the best-doing countries, institutions and authors, in terms of either productivity or impact, reveals the persistent Anglo-American dominance in shaping the agendas and discourses of the discipline. A central question emerging from these seemingly contradictory scenarios concerns the positioning of urban China studies vis-à-vis the Anglo-American ‘core’ of knowledge production. Do urban China scholars reproduce Anglo-American debates and implant them to China, as they rely heavily on the academic discourses emerging from the Anglo-American contexts, or are they innovative and capable in devising vocabularies and discourses which are sensitive to local contexts? Mindful of these questions, this section tries to tease out some aspects of the internal ‘texture’ of the production and circulation of knowledge on urban China.
In this study, urban China studies is represented by a subset of the database, which contains 467 articles in Geography, and 530 in Urban Studies. A preliminary point that we can draw, therefore, is that urban China studies is still a considerably small area that is less likely to substantively shape the intellectual and theoretical agendas of Urban Studies. But the modest size of the area conceals the rapid growth it has undergone: while we have a record of 90 articles in Geography and 133 in Urban Studies for the period of 1990–2000, the figures are 377 and 396 for 2000–2010, respectively.
Consistent with the framework adopted in the previous section, we begin by locating the most active sites of production by identifying the countries and institutions that are origins of the largest numbers of articles. As Table 6 illustrates, in Geography and Urban Studies alike, China is the largest source of contributions (39.83% and 40.38%), attesting to expanded opportunities for scholars outside the Anglophone core to participate in international publishing. However, urban China studies is not a closed area whereby only endogenously produced knowledge is considered authentic. Urban China is of interest to academics based in USA, UK, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, etc. Collectively, USA, UK and Canada contribute 55.03% and 52.45% of China articles in the respective categories, surpassing China-based scholars. If we attend to the most productive institutions, it is evident that Chinese institutions (6 of top 20 institutions in Geography, and 6 in Urban Studies) are overshadowed by universities in Hong Kong and the National University of Singapore and, to a lesser extent, Anglo-American universities. The strong momentum of Hong Kong and Singapore in publishing on China is arguably due to the fact that they have geographical and cultural proximity to China – scholars there are highly versed in English-language publishing, while possessing the language and cultural ability to navigate Chinese contexts.
The 20 most productive countries in urban China studies, 1990–2010.
An examination of the most active authors on urban China attests to the rise of China-based scholars; even the so-labelled ‘Anglo-American’ contributors to urban China scholarship constitute a complex scenario, comprising of a notable number of Chinese expatriates. The lists of the top 20 most productive authors show that the landscape of knowledge production on urban China, at least with reference to the cohort of the most active researchers, is relatively clear-cut, as most names appearing here correspond with the most productive institutions (such as the pairings of FL Wu and Cardiff University, DYH Wei and University of Utah, CC Fan and UCLA, etc., Table 7). In Geography and Urban Studies, respectively, 10 and 12 are based outside the Anglophone world, variously in Hong Kong, Mainland China and Singapore. Interestingly, of those based in Anglo-American institutions, the majority are ethnic Chinese, and many even received part of their academic training in Mainland China. In sum, this group of urban China specialists consists largely of ‘inbetween’ scholars who are presumably more sensitive to local specificities, but also have been steeped in the practices and expectations of Anglo-American institutions, with the expertise to negotiate the conventions and norms of international publishing. Indeed, this cohort of inbetween scholars have played important roles in building dialogues, and translating between different systems of theories, vocabularies and discourses. On the one hand, versed in the Chinese language and more sensitive to local concerns and sensibilities, they have become the ‘to-go’ scholars for Anglophone academics who are keen on expanding the scope of urban knowledge. On the other hand, these inbetween scholars have, through works and partnerships, contributed to the rise of a new group of China-based scholars heavily involved in international publishing. It may be reasonable to say that ‘inbetween’ ethnic Chinese scholars, in one sense, reproduce the inherent inequality in the global landscapes of knowledge production, for closeness to the Anglophone publishing industry, in one way or another, shapes their academic prestige and reputation. Nonetheless, they have actively contributed to ongoing diversification and hybridisation of Anglophone- and Chinese-language academic knowledge and vocabularies.
The 20 most productive authors in urban China studies, 1990–2010.
Turning attention to citation patterns, while the citation network of urban China studies is not as wide as those discussed earlier, the performance of urban China articles is far from mediocre. In Geography, the highest cited article (Li and Yeh, 2002) has harvested 201 citations, and ranks 47 in all Geography articles; in fact, all top 50 articles on urban China make it into the top 450 articles in ‘Geography’. In Urban Studies, 36 of the top 50 articles on China rank within the top 500 of the category at large. The patterns of countries and institutions receiving the most citations are similar to the results based on productivity.
In terms of high-impact authors, scholars from Chinese institutions, Anglo-American institutions, and other parts of the world have uneven shares in the list of most cited authors. Take the 20 most cited China studies scholars in Geography, for example: four are from Mainland China institutions, eight from Anglo-American ones, and the remaining eight from other parts of the world, including Hong Kong and Singapore; in Urban Studies, the figures are, respectively, four, nine and seven. In general, China-based scholars are less likely to exert a large influence than ethnic Chinese based outside the Mainland. 11 In the meantime, it is authors based in Anglo-American institutions and Hong Kong that tend to concentrate at the upper half of the lists. We speculate that a miscellany of factors explains this: (1) scholars based in Anglophone institutions (USA, UK and Hong Kong universities) are viewed as more authoritative voices; (2) they are more prone to theorising and agenda setting while Mainland scholars are more interested in empirical studies; and (3) the bulk of knowledge created by Chinese scholars circulates only within the domestic intellectual circles, which is not reflected in the WoS database. The latter two factors are related to the institutional context of Mainland Chinese academia. Nowadays, in Mainland Chinese academic institutions, publishing in English-language journals is highly valued, and prioritised in most universities over Chinese language publications and policy consultancies. Yet, understandably, Mainland scholars may not have been socialised into theoretical vocabularies and discourses preferred by ‘international journals’ to the same extent as ethnic Chinese outside China. Hence, focusing on presenting empirical analyses may be a safer strategy for Chinese scholars to navigate a relatively unfamiliar terrain of academic endeavours, relying on the theorising work of an elite of expatriate ethnic Chinese (but the difference is being steadily narrowed). In the meantime, there is a sophisticated system of academic publishing in the Chinese language, with a good diversity of high-quality journals, and publications in Chinese are still recognised as evidence of academic merit and achievement. The experiences of domestic Chinese scholars may not be generalised as exemplary of non-Western or non-Anglophone academics. But some degree of commonality exists between Chinese scholars and those from other emerging economies, such as India, Brazil and South Korea, in terms of: (1) the pressure to publish in international journals, and the disadvantages they are likely to face, if they want to advance new theorisations and research agendas; (2) tension between publishing in Anglophone journals and publishing in indigenous languages, and how differentiated values accorded to these two types of publications will shape publishing behaviours of non-Western academics in the long run.
With these observations in mind, we are raising some critical questions that project back onto the problematique of centre–periphery relations. What is the implication of the steady growth of a niche area of research on urban China amidst the persistent dominance of Anglo-American debates? With regard to the active involvement of academics based in Anglo-American institutions in the interpretation and knowledge construction on urban China, should it be met by applause or alarm? Is the state of inbetweenness of ethnic Chinese publishing in international journals a productive one, or does it contribute to colonial subjects wearing ‘white masks’ (Fanon, 1986), estranged from local contexts? While the bibliometric analysis is not able to address these epistemological questions, it nonetheless hints at some promises and constraints internal to the status quo of knowledge production. Given these questions, we proceed to explore some further questions: (1) what specific knowledge feeds into urban China studies, and what research endeavours, in turn, draw from this area; (2) to what extent urban China studies depend on Anglo-American debates, or is there a likely spillover of knowledge that disrupts entrenched, Anglo-American perspectives and vocabularies; (3) what are the convergences and divergences between urban China studies and ‘mainstream’ debates in terms of key research topics?
To answer these questions, we used Histcite to sort out the references that urban China articles have cited to build their own rhetorics. Table 8 presents a summary of the 50 works (in each category) on which China articles most heavily relied. An interesting finding is that almost all the 50 most-cited references address directly the Chinese context; in other words, they are more or less within the rubric of what we may call ‘China studies’. A considerable proportion of them are urban China articles that already exist in the database. Topics covered by this ensemble of ‘foundational’ works are all highly specific to the urban experiences of post-reform China, ranging from urbanisation and landscape change, to regional development, to domestic migration, to housing and land development. These works contributed to context-specific academic discourses and vocabularies, such as urbanisation in transitional economy, urbanisation from below, the hukou system, regional disparity, and the dual-track land/housing development (fostered by the parallel forces of the state and the market). Exceptions to China-specific articles include McGee’s chapter on desakota urbanism, Szelenyi’s influential work on cities after socialism, Myrdal’s classic work on the underdevelopment of regions, Sassen’s book on global cities, and Logan and Molotch’s thesis on the political economy of place. All these works, in our opinion, shed light on the political economy and socio-spatial changes that constitute Chinese urbanism without necessarily imposing a Western epistemological nomenclature.
Cited references used by urban China articles
In this sense, it seems to be normal for urban China scholars to frame their narratives without citing heavily publications that speak to Anglo-American contexts, and there is arguably a high degree of reliance on recycling knowledge within the circle of China studies. ‘Big names’ in mainstream Anglo-American debates are more often than not secondary to authorities specialising in China. This, interestingly, is not necessarily deemed unacceptable by journals and reviewers. Presumably, the criteria evaluating the quality of academic work may not be as rigid as commentators such as Aalbers (2004) and Kitchin (2005) suggested. This analysis, however, is ineluctably limited and biased, as different topics mean very different aggregates of literatures to be cited. For example, scholars of migrants in China may draw from Anglo-American debates on migration, but such citation behaviours are veiled by the computational analysis. Nonetheless, this analysis highlights a shared sensitivity to contextual contingencies amongst urban China scholars.
The final question to be explored, which, in our opinion, is critical to provincialising urban studies is whether urban knowledge emerging from contexts beyond the core is drawn by Anglo-American, or broadly Western, academics to denaturalise dominant assumptions, epistemologies, theories and vocabularies. Urban China studies offers a feasible window to engage with this question. Hence, we collected via WoS all the academic works which cited the 50 most cited urban China articles in Geography and Urban Studies. This analysis explores the flow of knowledge in a reverse direction to the previous one, namely, the extent to which urban China articles contribute to the epistemological and explanatory basis of subsequent works. The finding is not particularly encouraging. In both Geography and Urban Studies, it is evident that the ‘consumption’ of urban China articles is largely restricted to the community of China scholars. In fact, except Luca Salvati, who relied on insights from urban China scholarship to explore land use changes in Mediterranean urban regions, virtually all of the 20 scholars who the most heavily draw from urban China research (in either category) are themselves urban China specialists. In a similar vein, the institutions that most frequently cite urban China scholarship correspond with those that are the most active in producing urban China knowledge. To summarise, while it is safe for urban China articles to speak less about Anglo-American debates, in terms of getting articles published, this area has yet to demonstrate substantial potential of bridging different debates and energising comparative analyses.
Conclusion
Based on the analyses we have put together so far, some tentative conclusions may be drawn, not only as a summary of the findings detailed above, but also an invitation extended to urban scholars for further reflecting on the habitus of urban knowledge production and circulation, which is circumscribed in some ways and being opened in others. To begin with, although the overall publishing space has undoubtedly been diversified, it is still Anglophone academics, basing their research largely on the UK and North American contexts, who are likely to publish more, and publish more influential and debate-shaping works. With regard to both the sites of knowledge production and impact, the privileged position of the Anglophone world has not yet been substantially altered. The analysis of consumption of citations, meanwhile, echoes Foster et al.’s (2007: 310) study on economic geography – the circulation of knowledge is based on ‘dense professional networks, mostly channelling through Anglophone parts of the global North’. An examination of the works citing urban China articles further implies that there is relatively limited spillover of knowledge from the ‘periphery’ to the ‘core’ – indeed, knowledge on urban China, proliferation notwithstanding, is largely recycled within the small circle of China scholars.
Despite that a few scholars specialising on China and other non-Anglophone contexts, the majority of those who have made it to the lists of most productive and influential authors are less proactive in addressing the ‘peripheries’ of urban knowledge, as suggested by the current analyses at least. The championing for ‘ordinary’ cities, comparative urbanism, and urban theories beyond the West, seen from current analyses of high-impact articles and authors, is still a relatively small and inchoate intellectual movement, although it appears to be gaining greater momentum in the aftermath of the period of this study, i.e. post-2010, reflected by the publication of several critical commentaries and special issues within a relatively short period (McFarlane and Robinson, 2012; Robinson 2014, 2016; Robinson and Roy, 2016; Sheppard et al., 2013).
By signposting the comparative gesture in urban studies, we, however, do not argue that Western cities and cities beyond the West are conceptually and epistemologically incommensurable (Storper and Scott, 2016). The agenda that we advocate is to examine the differences, local variations, and semi-autonomous trajectories of urban changes, amidst the reinforcing interdependence and networking of global capitalism, cultures and consciousness; when possible, family resemblances and common conceptual grounds may be found, despite the fact that concepts and theories may be inherently contested and tensioned (Wyly, 2015).
Finally, to be fair to journals editors and reviewers criticised as the gatekeepers of Anglo-centric epistemology (e.g. Aalbers, 2004), we suggest that the norms of international publishing may themselves be changing. Small and peripheral as it is, and likely to remain so in a foreseeable future, urban China research is growing under the larger rubric of urban studies, and has indeed gone beyond reproducing Anglo-American debates. In particular, the examination of the references that China scholars have used to build their theoretical and explanatory bases suggests that this subarea has developed some scholarly conventions resistant to uncritical borrowing from Anglophone literatures. Thanks to an enlarging cohort of inbetween scholars who navigate through the norms of international publishing but keep a grasp of local specificities, urban China studies has supplied fresh perspectives and vocabularies to urban scholarship in general (He and Qian, 2017). The challenge faced by this small field, in this sense, may be less about blindly following ‘bigger’ debates than its still very introspective nature, that is, the relative lack of momentum in speaking back to the centre. Surely, to alter this impasse would entail China scholars more proactively ‘selling’ their research, ideas and critical thinking. Even the ongoing critique of the Anglo-centric mindset in the intellectual core is insufficient if action beyond critique is not discernible. In other words, scholars in the ‘core’ need to engage with and debate the works emerging on urban China and other contexts on the terms of these newly emerging discourses. For those wishing to de-naturalise Western episteme, the small, yet vibrant and growing area of urban China studies will provide possibilities for opening and provincialising theoretical and empirical debates in urban studies, albeit in slow, patchy, and incremental ways.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research received funding from Lee Kong Chian Fund for Research Excellence at Singapore Management University.