The Relational and Intra-active Becoming of Nongovernment-initiated Organizing in the People’s Republic of China

Abstract

In this article, we propose a theoretical framework for understanding a type of organizing in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) which is often defined as “non-governmental.” We are inspired by critical feminist writings on the production of knowledge. We draw on geographer Doreen Massey’s conceptualization of space, physicist Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism and notion of “intra-action,” and grounded theorist Adele Clarke’s understanding of context. Our analysis is based on the case of the Yunnan Reproductive Health Research Association, an organization approaching the issue of gender from the perspective of reproductive health. We contend that the organization is entangled with foreign development aid donor organizations and party-state institu-tions and that the three entities (the association, donor organizations, and party-state institutions) lack independent, self-contained existence in their joint involvement in performatively bringing the knowledge and practice of what we call nongovernment-initiated organizing into being. Our position is that, while donors and party-state, respectively, may have vested interests in claiming separation from nongovernment- initiated organizations, academic analysis need not, and should not, uncritically replicate that particular representation of separation. Nongovernment-initiated organizing is local and “Chinese,” in the sense that it is territorially situated in the PRC. We argue that the “local” phe-nomenon of bottom-up organizing is not closed or self-constitutive. On the contrary, it is relational, and the relations involve the intra-active entanglement not only with the domestic party-state but also with for-eign development aid donors.

Keywords

Gender and development organization nongovernment-initiated organizing People’s Republic of China agential realism foreign development aid donors domestic party-state

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Barad, Karen . (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward and understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3), 801–831.

Barad, Karen . (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham & London: Duke University Press.

Bhabha, Homi . (1994/2009). The location of culture. London & New York: Routledge.

Clarke, Adele . (2005). Situational analysis: Grounded theory after the post-modern turn. New Delhi, London, & Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.

Edwards, Louise . (2009). Diversity and evolution in the state-in-society. International influences in combating violence against women. In Linda Chelan Li (Ed.), The Chinese state in transition (pp. 108–126). London & New York: Routledge.

Fowler, Alan . (1991). Building partnerships between northern and southern development NGOs: Issues for the 1990s. Development in Practice, 1(1), 5–18.

Howell, Jude . (2004). New directions in civil society: Organizing around marginalized interests. In Howell Jude (Ed.), Governance in China (pp. 143–171). Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield.

Jeffreys, Elaine . (2004). China, sex and prostitution. London & New York: Routledge.

Kent, Alexandra . (in press). Intervention or interaction? Developing ideas from Cambodia. Development Dialogue.

10.

Lu, Yiyi . (2009). Non-governmental organizations in China: The rise of dependent autonomy. London & New York: Routledge.

11.

Massey, Doreen . (2005). For space. New Delhi, London, & Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.

12.

Milwertz, Cecilia , & Wang, Fengxian . (2010, January 29–31). A Western NGO goes East and meets up with other stories. Paper presented at the workshop “Transcultural Metamorphoses,” Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, Copenhagen University.