Contested Social Work: Service-Provision NGOs as Agents of Change in Urban China

• In Event: 594 - Section on Political Sociology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 17. NGOs as Political Actors

Abstract

Why do service-provision NGOs in China have more organizational potential than their counterparts in other developing countries? This paper examines a form of service-provision organizations that has been proliferating in urban China and deserves more scholarly attention: the state-procured social work agency (SWA). I argue that two key factors contributed to the organizational potential of these social work agencies from other kinds of service-provision NGOs studied in current literature: 1) professional knowledge and identity; 2) social embeddedness of the organization. Using interview data of nine social work agencies in Beijing as my case studies supplemented with secondary materials, I find that SWAs with a more cohesive identity in professional social work may generate more agency even within local state co-optation. To preserve more organizational autonomy, SWAs, led by professional social workers, often engage in expertise-based games backed by professional knowledge to advance organizational interest in a depoliticized fashion. Through the dynamics of a controlled activism, SWAs are able to gradually influence the grassroots state by embedding social work practices, expanding the scope of service allocation, and integrating a people-centered social work values into the urban community service-provision. By gradually dissociating their service practices from traditional state social provisions and local party-state bureaucracies, SWAs may be potential agents of change that are crucial to the Chinese civil society. Implications for future studies of service-provision NGOs are also discussed.

Author

• Ling Han, University of California-San Diego