From Order-style To Empowerment-style:the Evolution Of Mobilization Mechanism In "Unit" Community

As a special organizational form under the planning system, the "Unit (Danwei) System" met the needs for the integration of resources, reconstruction of the society, and the rapid construction in the early times of the New China. The residential district around the unit gradually developed into a "unit"(Danwei) community, where includes the functions of living, working, and services for the convenience of living and production. Since the early of1990s, due to the market-oriented reforms and the function transformation of government, the Unit System has been in the process of weakening and in some sense diminishing. However, the "Unit" community as an entity still survives as a new form of community, which is valued for the time being by the government for easing the house tension in the urban and is growing increasingly. The Unit Community not only has the obviously stamp of strong governance from government, but also has strong mark of Unit System. This special historical characteristic of Unit Community makes it similar to other urban communities but also different from them. In reality, Unit Community has the big issue of low participation in the mobilization which seriously influenced its construction. The present study will examine the evolution of mobilization mechanism in Unit Community, which will solve the problems emerging in the process of community building, facilitate the socializing development of community, and enrich the studies of community typology.Based on the case of a large state-owned enterprise in Hebei province, this study employed the extended case study to conduct a historical research on the relationship between the "Unit" Community mobilization mechanism and national macro-structural as well as the institutional changes in the perspective of the mobilization theory. This paper examined the mechanism and its outcome in four aspects which are structure, organization, discourse and a sense of community. This paper found that the macro-structure and community structure determine the organizational strategy of mobilization and discourse choice of mobilization, which generate the sense of community by way of emotional mobilization, and the sense of community trigger the occurrence of the community action, which in turn affect the community structure, organization and discourse, as well as a sense of community.The present paper concluded that during the period of Unit System, when there is no concept of community, the mobilization mechanism is unit mobilization, which is a mixture of political mobilization, production mobilization and mobilization of life. Unit mobilization mechanism showed a strong mobilization effect by way of mobilization organization generated by a combination of single power structure and uniform resource allocation system, mobilization discourse system characterized by the combination of political discourse and production of discourse, and unit identity resulted from the collectivization context, which contribute to the involvement and actions from all members. However, unit mobilization mechanism suppressed the individual interests and desire, resulted into the huge cost for full mobilization, and become the background of reform for community mobilization.The present paper also found that during the period of the early stage of comprehensive market reforms, with the downsizing to improve efficiency of state-owned enterprises, the intervention of market forces, the digestion of units system, and the beginning of community building, the powers and resources within the "unit" community gradually were split from the state-owned enterprises, and the ability of mobilization from the order of the higher level dropped, therefore the discourse of mobilization returned back to life mobilization from the production mobilization, in the process of which the unit identity was weakening and the community-based emotion shared by all residents was not generated. This study named the mobilization mechanism during this period as "Order-style Mobilization" that the high level mobilizes hierarchically by order-style and the objective of mobilization responds passively with obedience or the negative behavior of participation so that there is less free space for "unit community" mobilization. The order-style mobilization worked effectively for mobilization during the transition period and maintained the overall order of the community but put heavy burden of social function to the enterprises which are economic unit.This paper concluded that during the deepening stage of the market-oriented reform of state-owned enterprises, the social function of corporate was further stripped while the identity of workers was completely transformed resulting into the segmentation of the "unit" community membership. The power and resources of the community were sunk into the secondary unit of the enterprise and scarcely come into the social field. The secondary units of the enterprises became the main organization of community mobilization while the enterprises with executive powers provided the guidance and assessment criteria without mandatory requirement, and the residents’ committee cooperated with them in terms of work. Both the secondary units of the enterprises and the residents’ committee try to construct the discourse of mobilization about the interests of community groups, promote the arrival of a sense of community, and to some extent bridge the identity segmentation of members of community, however such mobilization mechanism is ineffective because of the intervention of the state-owned enterprises, the absence of government and society, and the deficiency of the mobilization subject with the abilities of overall integration of community resources. This study defined the mobilization mechanism at this period as "Guidance-style Mobilization" that the enterprises with executive powers provide guidance and conduct check, supported mainly by the secondary unit and supplemented with mobilization from resident’s committee, to create a residents’ support and reciprocity networks in order to obtain residents’ recognizance and active participation, while there is a certain autonomy space.This paper found that during the stage of social construction, the impact of government through the effect of community power structure and resource allocation system from the enterprise still existed, while the power of society grew, and the residents’ committee in the "unit community" started to integrate the resources and mobilize at the community level. The tension between government and society makes the two subjects of mobilization, residents’ committee and community self-organization, try to obtain the support from both corporate and government for the administrative legality during the process of the action selection, in order to seek the public’s recognition and participation for the social legitimacy, which also contributed to construction of mobilization discourse of official ideology and public opinion. The Unit community during this period gradually formed a new mobilization order, but the scope and boundaries among country, corporate and social power are necessary to be clarified. This paper defined the mobilization mechanism at this period as "Empowerment-style Mobilization" that the subjects of mobilization, both the resident’s committee and community self-government organizations, try to obtain the authorization of the executive power from the enterprises for the administrative legitimacy, and also want to have the support, cooperation, and active participation from the residents in the community for the authorization from the social power and the social legitimacy, while there is still some space for autonomy. The empowerment-style mobilization includes two perspectives. One is the perspective from up to bottom while the other is from bottom to up. The former is a kind of social empowerment which starts from the vast majority of the residents in community and reflects the ordinary people’s attempt to control their daily lives while the latter is a kind of administrative empowerment which reflects the perspectives and experiences from the authority and includes implicitly the existing power structure.Based on the a comprehensive review on the mobilization theories, the present study introduced the concept of community sense, extended the mobilization theory from the group analysis to the analysis of the field of community entities, constructed the analytical framework for community mobilization under the paradigm of the structure-action, and expanded the breadth and applicability of the explanation of theory. This study has several new findings as follows. Firstly, the patterns of mobilization mechanism evolved from order-style mobilization to guidance-style mobilization and then to empowerment-style mobilization. During this process the executive power for control of the mobilization gradually softened, the subjects of mobilization experienced the trend of diversity and have more space for autonomy, and the social power in community gradually highlighted. Secondly, the evolution of "unit community" mobilization mechanism was the joint outcome of external forces and internal forces while the former is the external pressure from the national macro-structural adjustment and the latter is the internal tension among the mainstream consciousness within the community, the different identities and interests of the members in community. Thirdly, due to the social structure and institutional change, the resources and powers at the community level experienced from concentration in unit to dispersal in different subjects in community, which resulted into the changes of the identity of members in community from consistence, to differentiation, and to segmentation, and then to the multi-integration, and also led to the change of mobilization from high concentration in the unit to inclusion into the community, therefore the process of socialization gradually deepened and contributed to the internal logic of evolution from "Order-style Mobilization" to "Empowerment-style Mobilization".This study concluded that the "Empowerment-style Mobilization" is much more suitable for mobilizing the powers of building the community than "Autonomy-style Mobilization"; clarifying the scope and boundary of various powers within the community is much more suitable to meet the needs of community development than purely promotion for "Autonomy-style Mobilization". This paper proposed four development routes for the community building from the perspectives of enhancing the effectiveness of community building mobilization and promoting the participation in community. The four routes are to promote community awareness of the enlightenment, to construct a multi-actor identity, to rebuild the identity space, and to structure a multiple two-way institution.