Abstract:

With the shift to the "post-rural" study of rural geography, the mixture of urban, rural, and hybrid environments has become the focus of rural geography. Rural community empowerment, the active intervention of urban and rural elements, promotes the establishment of sustainable rural autonomy. Taking the Zhonghe rural community in Taizhong as its case, this paper discusses the influence of social structures and individual actors on the formation of placeness through the two perspectives of social construction and humanism, and it explores the construction mechanism of community empowerment. The results are as follows. 1) The placeness of Zhonghe community empowerment is reflected in the location of rural suburbs, the practice site and activities of community construction, and the sense of place of participants and tourists. 2) The process of placeness construction is formed by the interaction between social objects and behavioral subjects in three stages. 3) Weak placeness causes reflexivity in the behavior body and the social object, which constitutes the basis of community empowerment. 4) The government has established a mature operation mechanism to promote community empowerment, which participants also promote according to the needs of daily life. This, in turn, promotes placeness production and reproduction, forming a continuous process of community building. 5) The results of placeness construction attract the reinvestment of human and economic capital inside and outside the community, which ensures the sustainable power of community empowerment. 6) Through community empowerment, a sustainable, pluralistic, and global place is created in the rural environment, which cultivates a collective identity and community cohesion, indirectly strengthening the capabilities of rural autonomy.

Key words: rural, community empowerment, placeness construction, Zhonghe community