| Transnational philanthropic foundations in China, along with other forms of international organizations, have been contributing to the modernization and development of China, yet they are also getting politically sensitive as in many other recipient countries. Cultural imperialism is often associated with transnational operations of foundations; a view shared by academics and the general public in both donor and recipient countries. However, the overly simplistic and heavily ideological claim does no justice to the complex and interactive philanthropic social relation, and denies the agency of local recipients, who are not just receivers of foreign money but more importantly—— promoters and undertakers of specific projects.This thesis takes up the issue of transnational philanthropic foundation’s operations in China and examines specifically that of the Ford Foundation. Among the pioneering foreign philanthropic foundations operating in China after the reform and opening up in the 1980s, Ford Foundation remains to be one of those with largest monetary commitment till today. With its regional office established in Beijing in 1988, Ford’s nearly three-decade operations in China have covered aspects from legal system construction and civil society development to poverty alleviation and promotion of gender equality. However, compared to its large-scale operations and enormous grant sums, the academic attention that the Foundation has received is far from enough to assess its three-decade involvement. Most of the existing evaluations, echoing those on transnational philanthropic organizations in general, notably those by Robert Arnove (1984) and Edward Berman (1980), are assertive instead of empirical and demonstrative. To complicate the picture of Ford Foundation in China as it is, this thesis studies the Foundation’s program of gender and village governance by adopting an agency-based approach and restoring the social relation it has with local recipients. The reason for choosing gender and village governance program lies in its rich nature of aiming both to promote gender equality in political participation and governance reform at grassroots level in China.This thesis borrows the perspective and critique of cultural imperialism but also avoids purely ideological assertion and explores the interactive social relation of Ford Foundation and its local recipients, especially the agency of the latter. Adopting the theory of philanthropy as a social relation proposed by Ostrander and Schervish (1990) and the concept of glocalization proposed by Roland Robertson (1995), this research examines Ford’s gender and village governance program under the framework of glocalization. The purpose is to explore how the foreign foundation funded projects, which in essence are carriers of social relations, became localized in China. Under Ford’s gender and village governance program, there are altogether 14 rural women’s political participation projects. This empirical research has chosen four of them to investigate based on a project’s duration and impact. The primary sources used for this study include both archival records —— such as the Foundation’s annual reports, unpublished internal report, academic evaluation reports of specific projects, and training materials generated by the program —— and also in-depth interviews with ten participants of those projects from both donor and recipient side, including the Foundation’s program officer, project recipients and consultants, and also those rural women who were direct beneficiaries of those projects.Probing into both the Foundation’s strategic planning and agency of local recipients, this research finds that contrary to the simplistic and overarching claim of cultural imperialism, Ford Foundation plays a role of facilitator instead of agenda-setter or dominator in the glocalization process. The Foundation certainly has clear goals of promoting democracy and gender equality at grassroots level through building networks among Chinese activists and scholars and through strategically choosing project pilot sites which were distributed at all administrative levels and handpicking recipients with official backing. However, the success of the Foundation’s projects does not lie solely in its clear-mindedness or monetary and technical strength. The Chinese government’s endorsement to and even encouragement of international organizations participating in the experiment field of grassroots democracy is a determining factor of the success. Also of importance are the compatible needs the Foundation shared with local recipients and, from a technical perspective, its hands-off approach in giving recipients full autonomy. On the side of local recipients, their agency is demonstrated through recognizing the need of tackling underrepresentation of women in villagers committee, approaching Ford for financial support, accepting the Foundation’s frameworks and absorbing them into existing local ones, adjusting project plan according to local needs and incorporating project implementation into Chinese Party-State institutional system. In general, their agency is two-fold in the sense of not only transforming imported concepts and frameworks but also accepting those that answer local needs or, in another phrase, glocalizing those frameworks. From the perspective of local recipients, a decisive factor of the success of Ford projects is that they are either part of the Party-State administrative system—— women’s federations at different levels and Ministry of Civil Affairs —— or they are able to access and use Party-State resources as non-governmental women’s organizations. By integrating the resources from transnational organization and local government to address their own concerns, local recipients are by no means the surrogates of transnational philanthropy.The thesis argues that though the Foundation dominated the beginning of the philanthropic relation as Ostrander’and Schervish’s theory has predicted, it ceased to dominate and even shrunk solely to the role of monetary provider in the process because of the compatible needs it had with its recipients and the Party-State decision-making system. As a matter of fact, these two factors together decided that the Foundation had to adopt a conservative approach in mainstreaming gender in village governance and rely largely on local government resources through its recipients. Therefore, in transnational philanthropic studies, the administrative system and development of civil society in recipient country, governmental attitude toward international organizations in general, and its funded fields should all be treated as important variables. Also, the thesis of cultural imperialism should not be blindly applied to any scenario of international organization versus developing or third world countries. |
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