From a community to a city

Zhuhai is a modern city which has gone through tremendous transformation in the past decade years. It used to be a fishing village where people lived and gathered together because of kinship or friendship. However, today, it became a financial region with a image of urban prosperity and rapid economic development. The commercial culture has brought huge imacp on the city. In this case, what is the city image in the public mind, especially for the original residents and the new immigrants? How they see the city in different ways?

There is no doubt that Zhuhai has gone through a huge transformation. This transformation is structural. It has transformed from a Gesellschaft to a Gemeinschaft. The concepts of Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft were first introduced by Ferdinand Tonnies, a German sociologist. People usually refer the two concepts to "society" and "community". According to the definition, Gesellschaft refers to the society that is based on rational will and represents the non-human nature relationship which focuses on earning a living. This society aims at the exchange of interests. In this society, the capitalist industrial economy replaces the cohesion generated by family and blood.

Gemeinschaft is based on natural will, that people may associate themselves together as friends do. Natural will is the conditioning and originating element in any process of willing which is derived from the temperament, character, and intellectual attitude of the individual, whether it has its origin in linking, inclination, habit or memory. There are Gemeinschaft groups based on friendship, on neighborliness, and on blood relationships.

In the past, there were families and neighborhoods which composed the Gemeinschaft image of Zhuhai. The members of the community found their similarities, and operated under a collective conscience. Morality were upheld by the masses. Communication consisted of face-to-face interaction, and ideas are transmitted through an oral culture.

Later, with the transformation, it is now the economic interests which drove more immigrants together in this place and bond people together. Interests became the most motivation and concern for people. Relationship between people is relatively estranged and became more like a mean rather than goal. Divisions of labor and goal-oriented behavior in Zhuhai became distinctive to the Gesellschaft world. For this kind of Gesellschaft, there was only one factor that united people together, that is, the interest. People interacted with each other only for their own interests. They share a kind of working partnership or business relationship,and hardly develop or maintain any emotional bondage towards each other like people did in the past. The working relationship distanced people so they won’t be too intimate.They just know each other superficially. They do not really care how others were doing. What they focused was just whether they could make money through the business with other person. In this sense, Zhuhai as a Gesellschaft, is more like a mechanical construction, filling up with money, rather than a living organization.

Cultures in the city, also, transformed from pre-industrial, traditional communities into modern, urbanized societies with a more commercialized culture. But this community development is a inevitable phase for most of the modern cities nowadays. From Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft, the society abandoned something but gained something new.  The transformation is not a bad thing, but it definitely has a great impact on how people interact with each other.