Chinese NGOs at the interface between governmentality and local society: An actor-oriented perspective

Abstract

The relations between society and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been relatively neglected in the field of China NGO studies, which remains largely wedded to a state–NGO problematic within a state–society framework. In this anthropological study of an NGO’s post-Wenchuan earthquake recovery programme, we adopt an actor-oriented approach to identify the main lines of tension between the strategies, rationalities, and techniques deployed by the different actors in the field. Focusing on NGO–society relations, we take the NGO not as an incarnation of society vis-a-vis the state, nor as an incarnation of the state vis-a-vis society, but as a key link in a shifting chain of state and non-state actors that aims to introduce to local society an assemblage of techniques, discourses, and values for the promotion of self-government. This ‘international development package’ is a specific form of what social scientists have theorized as ‘governmentality’. In this case study, the modalities of participation and cooperative self-government promoted within this development package are in tension with local values, social relations, and political structures. The case shows that dynamic tensions between the actors are mediated by the deployment of practices of governance that circulate between international institutions and networks, state agencies, NGOs, and local authorities and actors.