Shenzhen’s Urban Villages. Dialogic cultural landscapes and resilient rituals

Rapid urbanisation is drastically reshaping our environment, destabilising traditional connections to place and notions of community, and with these the relationship between place and identity. In this context, how do we make sense of such change and how do we orient ourselves when prior notions of place and identity are disrupted or lost? To address such questions this paper will draw upon Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of dialogism, and through themes of mutuality, simultaneity, malleability and mobility examine concepts of cultural landscape, nature and ritual.