Between the family and the state: An ethnography of the civil associations and community movements in a Shanghai lilong neighborhood (Chinese text)

This research explores the civil associations, community movements and practices of the local government in a Shanghai lilong neighborhood. The central questions are: how these horizontal grassroots organizations and collective actions are constructed (reconstructed) and interpreted in late socialist China; what relationship between power and resistance is implied in these associations and actions; and furthermore, how they may affect China's political development, especially the emergence of civil society. This research explores these questions through an ethnography in a Shanghai lilong neighborhood named Pingmin.; By describing the spatial and temporal transition of the "three worlds" in Pingmin neighborhood, I show that the network of personal relations plays an important role in the development of the lilong neighborhood. This network is deeply influenced by the civil associations and collective actions in the neighborhood.; Then I describe and analyze how local power penetrates into the neighborhood life. With the arrival of real estate developers and the emergence of the property rights of the residents, local government power increasingly depends on neighborhood mobilization and residents' participation rather than on the administrative system. This provides opportunities for the growth of the civil associations in the neighborhood.; Following this background analysis of the power structure, I discuss separately on the practices of several civil associations and cases of collective action in the neighborhood. I argue that these civil associations and community movements are crucial to the construction of the horizontal networks, trust relationships and norms of general reciprocity, which would be the social capita! for potential democratization. On the other hand, these organizations and "daily forms of social movements" also express the vertical control from the state because this ideology borrows from state discourse. This paradox between dependency and autonomy make these associations and actions difficult to identify as simply the emergence of civil society. They embody a more complicated relationship between power and resistance. The resistance from grassroots is limited by the state power and yet, it prompts a transition of local power.