The Relational and Intra-active Becoming of Nongovernmentinitiated Organizing in the People’s Republic of China

Abstract

In this article, we propose a theoretical framework for understanding a type of organizing in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) which is often defined as “non-governmental.” We are inspired by critical feminist writings on the production of knowledge. We draw on geographer Doreen Massey’s conceptualization of space, physicist Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism and notion of “intra-action,” and grounded theorist Adele Clarke’s understanding of context. Our analysis is based on the case of the Yunnan Reproductive Health Research Association, an organization approaching the issue of gender from the perspective of reproductive health. We contend that the organization is entangled with foreign development aid donor organizations and party-state institutions and that the three entities (the association, donor organizations, and party-state institutions) lack independent, self-contained existence in their joint involvement in performatively bringing the knowledge and practice of what we call nongovernment-initiated organizing into being. Our position is that, while donors and party-state, respectively, may have vested interests in claiming separation from nongovernmentinitiated organizations, academic analysis need not, and should not, uncritically replicate that particular representation of separation. Nongovernment-initiated organizing is local and “Chinese,” in the sense that it is territorially situated in the PRC. We argue that the “local” phenomenon of bottom-up organizing is not closed or self-constitutive. On the contrary, it is relational, and the relations involve the intra-active entanglement not only with the domestic party-state but also with foreign development aid donors.

Key Words:

• Gender and development organization
• nongovernment-initiated organizing
• People’s Republic of China
• agential realism
• foreign development aid donors
• domestic party-state