The Study Of Institutional Change In Charity Practice

Institutional change is the key issue of the China·s social transformation theoryand practice. As the process and consequence of the relation adjustment between thestate and society, institutional changes with overall consistency have their ownevolution mechanisms and paths in different fields. Since the reform, the field ofcharity emerged as a special field representing the relation transformation betweennation and society, as well as the transformation of national welfare system. In recentyears, the development of charity is regarded as the important part of socialconstruction, and the related fields of charity are covered in legislation and socialpolicy reform. Compared with the institutional change of economy and politics, the"Renaissance" of Chinese charity has its unique institutional change logic differentfrom the former two. Institutional change is one of the core issues of modern socialscience, and economics, political science and other disciplines have carried outextensive in-depth study on institutional change.In the reflection of rational action-based model of institutional change, theacademic circles began to pay attention to the process study of institutional change,which emphasized the effect of interactions and games between actors on institutionalchange. In this token, the study chose C district with ongoing "charitable institutionalinnovation" as the object of study. C district as currently one of the well-developedphilanthropy area, its government attached particular importance to the developmentof philanthropy. During the field research, the Civil Affairs Bureau of C District waspushing for a social assistance system by integrating different charity forces. Thepromotion of this system involved the interaction between the government, socialorganizations, enterprises and other main bodies of charity practice, which provided good material for the author to study the institutional change in the field of charity. Inthis case, the main research method of the current research was a field study, whichnot only helped the author to grasp the whole process of institutional change, but alsogot a better understanding of the meaning and value of institutional change processthrough personal participation. Based on field observations, this study extracted"value","charity resources" and "charity ceremony" and several other major researchvariables, and carried out the research in the analysis framework of value-boundinstitutional change.Based on the process-interpretation route of institutional change study, thisresearch came to the conclusion that value factors could make an impact oninstitutional change by influencing the interaction between the relevant actors. On theone hand, the value was the media of the interaction, because interaction betweendifferent actors could occur only when the value consensus existed or were achieved;on the other hand, the concept of value factor provided the direction and blueprint forinstitution development. In addition, normative elements derived from the pursuit ofvalue constituted the components of institution, and actors could use this normativevalue to start the game and achieve new institution balance.In general, charity practice is a kind of activity involving "give" and "take".However, the specific charity practice was ritualized. On the one hand, the charityceremony was a tool to exercise the power, and the government integrated the socialpower through the ceremony; on the other hand, the ceremony was also the carrier ofvalue, and the value concept of charity was manifested through the ceremony. Inaddition, the ceremony also constituted a key link in the institution change, and wasan indispensable part of charity practice. For the government, the ceremony was notonly helpful to institution implementation, but also able to reproduce the powerthrough symbolic manifestation of the power itself. Through charity ceremony, thevalue ideal of altruism was manifested, and internalized in the participants’ cognitiveand meaning structure; on the other hand, through the "emotional mechanism" ofceremony, the participants could fully experience the true meaning of its value.The institution not only reflected but also in turn influenced the preferences and power of the construction or set-up unit. Through the institution construction toabsorb the social forces to participate in social assistance, the government not onlyintegrated the power of enterprise and social organizations, but also changed the pastcommunity-based relief mode led by government. The increase of charitable bodyfrom government leading to multi-party participation not only changed the existingproduction and distribution of charitable resources, but also to a certain extentchanged the power structure of grass-roots governance.In theory, the main value of this study was to propose that "value factors make animpact on the institutional change through the influence of interaction ", which tosome extent complemented the study of the effect of value on institutional change. Onthe other hand, this study took "charity ceremony" as an analysis point, and, to acertain extent, expanded the existing research boundary of charity.In practice, the study found out that the charity resources varied in terms of"value transformation" and "power mobilization", and charity resources could bedistinguished into negative charity resourcesμ and positive onesμ, which to a certainextent complemented the existing research on charity research concerning resources.The former one was formed through power mobilization or exchange of interests,including a "reciprocal" mechanism; the latter was resulted from the internalization ofaltruistic value, and was triggered by the actors· value aim. This distinction would behelpful to reflect the predicament of the current development of charity, so as toprovide reference for the healthy development of philanthropy.