Designed rurality and uneven hosthood: Socio-material ordering in rural tourism transformation

Rural tourism transformation is often studied through destination development, staging, representation and resident response, but less is known about how it is organised inside still-inhabited villages. Drawing on multi-period ethnographic fieldwork in Xijingyu, northern China, this article examines how visitor routes, thresholds, courtyards, visual cues and household routines are reordered as part of everyday village life. It develops designed rurality as a lens for analysing the socio-material arrangements that make an inhabited settlement visitor-readable, commercially usable and practically hostable. The analysis shows that this ordering differentiates residents through incorporation into tourism work and property relations, exposure to visitor visibility, and proximity to project information and decision timing. Villagers negotiate these positions through selective performance, quiet withdrawal and re-anchoring in kin and neighbourly worlds. The findings refine host-community debates by showing how host positions are materially and spatially produced, and suggest planning should address visibility, informal labour and resident liveability.