Depoliticizing China's Grassroots NGOs: State and Civil Society as an Institutional Field of Power

Abstract

This article employs ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to examine two distinct processes of depoliticization by non-governmental organizations advocating rights for sex workers in China. Drawing upon Bourdieu and institutional theory, we argue that the consolidation of state repression of civil society under the Xi regime created an institutional field of power to which two NGOs responded differently. While one of them relied on government procurement as its major funding source, thus diluting the original mission, the other internalized state rhetoric as it sought political legitimacy through state certification, thus sanitizing its political mission. These distinct responses were then institutionalized into organizational practices, norms and culture. Rather than portraying NGOs in China as either capable political actors or pawns of an authoritarian state, this article illustrates how NGOs are subtly depoliticized by being inculcated in a state-produced, hierarchical social order in which compliance with state norms becomes synonymous with organizational competence.

Managing the power of images: Environmental NGOs, networked public screens, and ‘interactive’ image events in China

“…These findings align with those of other emerging studies on the adaptation of domestic Chinese NGOs in their relationship with the state and their advocacy strategies to an increasingly constrained institutional context. 60 These findings highlight the interactiveness of image events, forming a dialogue with discussions on the wildness and tameness of image events and public screens. 61 Our findings also suggest that image events are conditioned by the institutional environment.…”

“…48 Other NGOs have undergone a depoliticization process and significantly altered their advocacy strategies. 49 The ways in which activists use the new communication technologies to stage environmental campaigns have also been transformed. In the early stages, mobile phones and social media played an important role in assisting the mobilization and organization of offline protests.…”

Neither Withdrawal nor Resistance: Adapting to Increased Repression in China

“…This might be found in the NGO sector, for example, among organizations that focus on issues as different as labor, the environment, poverty relief, the disabled, and animal rights. 25 NGOs working in one policy area may also respond differently to repression, as Fengrui Tian and Julia Chuang (2022) found with sex-worker NGOs that reconfigured their mission to conform with state priorities of control and surveillance, but in distinct ways. The analysis might also be extended to other professionals, such as acquiescent intellectuals (Perry, 2020) or the critical journalists whom Jonathan Hassid (2016) and Maria Repnikova (2017) have studied.…”

“…As NGOs continually adapt, many have redirected and depoliticized their activities. For those working in “sensitive” areas, such as sex worker rights, NGOs have aligned their mission with state priorities, moving from a focus on rights-based advocacy and decriminalization to health care and therapy or portrayals of sex workers as vulnerable victims who are also responsible mothers and providers (Tian and Chuang, 2022). Most labor NGOs have retreated from collective bargaining and rights protection to the safer ground of legal mobilization of individual workers or have “reinvented themselves in the field of corporate social responsibility.” Others still carry out collective bargaining, but pick their cases carefully, caution workers about the risks of pursuing an action, and avoid promoting strikes in favor of cultural or training work (Franceschini and Nesossi, 2018: 113, 127).…”

An intimacy field framework: Class, habitus and capital in gay relationships

“…Although much of Bourdieu's oeuvre was based on the Algerian and French society, the concepts of field, habitus and capital have been widely applied across cultural contexts (for examples on the Chinese context, see Mu & Pang, 2019;Sheng, 2014;Tian & Chuang, 2022). Bourdieu's theoretical concern is on the underlying structure of social reproduction.…”