From action to theory building: an action research of rural social work practice in China

ABSTRACT

In recent years, action research has gradually been accepted by social work educators and practitioners in Mainland China. Some have tried integrating action research into social work education and practice. However, many people only learn the form but do not seriously uphold the spirit of action research and understand its mission of knowledge building. Therefore, this article first introduces the key elements of participatory action research (PAR) and then uses a PAR project of rural social work as an example to demonstrate how researchers collaborate with frontline practitioners and local villagers to co-create knowledge in pursuit of a practical solution to problems of rural development in post-reform China. Finally, the paper will conclude with a theory of rural-urban alliance which has been generated in the PAR process. I hope this article will become the text for dialogues within the social work action research community in Mainland China.

近年来, 行动研究逐渐被中国内地社会工作教育工作者和实务工作者所接受。他们有些人试图将行动研究融入社会工作教育和实践当中。然而, 许多人只学了形式, 却没有认真地秉持行动研究的精神, 理解其知识建构的使命。因此, 本文首先介绍参与性行动研究 (PAR) 的关键要素, 然后以农村社会工作的PAR项目为例, 展示研究人员如何与一线社工和当地村民合作, 共同创造知识, 以寻求切实可行的解决方案, 以回应改革开放后中国农村发展到的问题。最后, 本文将总结在PAR过程中提炼的城乡合作模式。作者希望这篇文章能成为中国大陆社会工作行动研究群体的对话文本。

KEYWORDS:

• Participatory action research
• rural social work
• knowledge of action
• knowledge of change
• theory building

Introduction

Social work was first introduced to Chinese universities such as Yenching University in the 1920s. After the Communist Party of China came to power, social science disciplines such as social work were labelled as “bourgeois pseudoscience” and were abolished in the 1950s because the socialist state believed that socialist China had no social problems. So, social work education was unnecessary in that context (Wang 2012; Yuen-Tsang, Ku, and Wang 2014). However, since the economic reform and Open Door Policy in 1978, social sciences, including social work, were gradually re-established in Mainland Chinese universities. The Chinese government saw the need to train professional social workers to deal with increasingly complex social issues arising from rapid social and economic transformation. The social work profession experienced significant development in 2006 when the Chinese government officially announced the national policy of “building a strong social worker team to contribute to developing of a harmonious society”. A year later, the national examination was launched to certify social work professionals at all levels. Since 2008, pilot projects have been carried out in different cities and regions to professionalise social services across the country. The Chinese government encouraged key cities and regions (such as Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing) to create social worker positions in the formal civil service structure. The Chinese government also set a goal of setting up regular posts for two million well-trained social work professionals by 2015 and 3 million by 2020 under the National Medium and Long-term Plan of Talent Development [国家中长期人才发展规划纲要 (2010–2020)] by the State Council in May 2010. The National Social Work Manpower Training and Development Centre [社会工作人才培训及发展中心] was also set up by the State Ministry of Civil Affairs to coordinate training and offer further professional education and renewal of certification of social workers in 2011. In the field of education, in accordance with the above-mentioned national policies and goals, the number of undergraduate and graduate programmes in social work in colleges and universities grew rapidly. In 2018, China established 348 undergraduate programmes of social work and 150 Masters of Social Work (MSW) programmes. Another milestone was in 2013 the Ministry of Finance, in collaboration with the Ministry of Civil Affairs, developed guidelines for purchasing social services from NGOs. The government’s policy of purchasing social services was officially launched in 2015 by the Ministry of Finance and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.

The period from 2006 to 2017 was named the “spring” of social work by Chinese social work scholars. With the growth of the social work profession in Mainland China, the discussion of the development of “practice knowledge” and “indigenisation of social work” has become a research hotspot in the Chinese academic world and its social work institutions (Sim and Lau 2017; Leung 2007). However, since the rapid development of the social work profession in Mainland China in the mid of 1980s, most social work knowledge came from abroad, and the Chinese social work educators and practitioners have followed the “science-informing-practice” model that emphasises translating scientific knowledge to action (Nowotny, Scott, and Gibbons 2001). However, how scientific research methods create practice knowledge has become a puzzle of social work development in China. In recent years, when more and more practitioners have questioned the “science-informing-practice” translation model, more attempts have been made in recent years to try to understand the nature of social work practice and to produce knowledge that can deal with the ambiguity in social work practice in China. Action research, as a type of practice research, has gradually been recognised and accepted by social work educators and practitioners in Mainland China to explore the possibility of research informing practice. Some have tried integrating action research into social work education and practice. However, I also found that many people only learned the form of action research but did not really understand its mission of knowledge building and seriously upholding the spirit of action research. Therefore, this article first introduces the key elements of participatory action research (PAR). And it uses a PAR project in Southwest China to demonstrate how rural social workers collaborate with local villagers by employing PAR as methodology and social economy as the practice framework to co-create knowledge in pursuit of a practical solution to problems of rural development in responding to challenges of food and agricultural production in rural areas. Finally, the paper will conclude with a rural-urban alliance model generated in this action research. I hope this article will become the text for dialogues within the social work action research community in Mainland China.

Action research as a type of practice research

Practice research is a form of academic research that emerged in response to the dilemma of the social work profession. In recent years, the international social work community has faced struggles and challenges, including the inability of traditional positivistic social science research methods to address the problems of social work practice, as well as a growing frustration among practitioners and policymakers with a lack of relevance of traditional research findings to practice and policy-making. As a result, there is a growing discussion of action research and practice/practitioner research in the Western social work profession (Sim and Lau 2017; Nowotny, Scott, and Gibbons 2001; Salisbury Statement 2009; Petersén and Olsson 2015).

Until today, there is no uniform definition of what practice research is. Like Corradi, Gherardi, and Verzelloni (2010) state, practice research is like the “bandwagon”, the idea of a collective journey involving an activity able to bring together a heterogeneous group of subjects in pursuit of the same goal. However, social work professionals have recognised that more knowledge is needed to inform practice, and more efforts have been made to understand the nature of praxis and develop practical knowledge that can deal with uncertainty in practice. (Nowotny, Scott, and Gibbons 2001). Thus, a group of academic and social workers joined in 2008 to discuss and publish the Salisbury Statement on Practice Research, emphasising practice as the object of research as “Practice research involves curiosity about practice. It is about identifying good and promising ways to help people, and it is about challenging troubling practice through the critical examination of practice and the development of new ideas in the light of experience” (32).

Today, more and more social work scholars try to define what constitutes practice research. For example, Uggerhøj states, “Practice research is an emerging approach within social work research. The basic foundation of practice research is building theory from practice (not only from academia). The approach is based on a combination of research methodology, field research and practical experience” (Uggerhoj 2011, 50). Austin and Carnochan introduce that practice research seeks to understand practice in the context of the relationships between service providers and service users, between service providers and their managers, between agency-based service providers and community advocacy and support groups, and between agency managers and policymakers. Practice research represents a form of evidence-informed practice that involves a wide array of research designs and methods, in contrast to the narrower emphasis on experimental designs that characterises evidence-based practice (Austin and Carnochan 2020). I incline to define practice research inclusively. To me, practice research is an umbrella term referring to a researcher researching his practice or practice implemented by others with practical concerns. The goal is to create practical knowledge in order to improve the practice and tackle the confusion and puzzles in the process of practice. It includes multiple epistemologies, research designs, and methods, including quantitative and qualitative. No matter which definition, they emphasise the needs, vision and wisdom of the practitioners involved in the social work intervention programme, looking for insights from research to build up a self-correcting and self-improving process in practice. It also makes known a new attempt by which data and analyses collected in interventions turn out to be the ground on which both practitioners and researchers conduct an ongoing evaluation. In light of this, intervention programmes can be modified in reaction to the changing needs of the clients and the complexities of the practice context. This is an approach using research skills to strengthen practice.

There are different research strategies in practice research to study and develop knowledge that emerges directly from the complex practices themselves for supporting practitioners’ legitimacy of intervention and making changes for other people. For example, we have a single case design, an evaluation method that can be used to rigorously test the success of an intervention or treatment in a specific case (i.e. a person, family, community). It provides evidence about the general effectiveness of an intervention by using a relatively small sample size (e.g. Lobo et al. 2017). Evidence-based practice (EBP) is another popular practice research in which the practitioner combines well-researched interventions with clinical experience and ethics, as well as client preferences and culture, to guide and inform treatments and services provided (e.g. Melnyk et al. 2010). Clinical data mining, developed by Irwin Epstein, is a practice-research integration strategy whereby practitioners learn to conceptualise, analyse and interpret their own routinely collected clinical data to improve their practice and contribute to knowledge (Epstein 2015, 2011).

Influenced by different philosophical traditions, action research is another methodological approach for improving practice and making change. Bradbury states, “Action research is a democratic and participative orientation to knowledge creation. It brings together action and reflection, theory and practice, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern. Action research is a pragmatic co-creation of knowing with, not on about, people” (Bradbury 2015, 1). Different from other practice research approaches; action research has a clear political orientation. The primary goal of PAR is to create a more just society through transformative social change (Small 1995; Park 1993; Vickers 2005; Reason and Bradbury 2008). Thus, research in action research is no longer seen as solely a means of creating knowledge; it is also a process of education, development of consciousness, and a call to action (Small 1995; Park 1993, 1999; Reason and Bradbury 2008). Action research, especially participatory action research (PAR), emphasises partnership – academic researchers are hand-in-hand with local people to co-create practical knowledge to resolve the problem faced. Thus local participants (often peasant/poor/marginal people) are regarded as “knowers”, and their knowledge and experiences are recognised (Kesby 2000, 424) and local people are treated as partners in the research process and are usually referred to as co-researchers (Gaventa 1988; Streck 2007; Schruijer 2006; Small 1995; Park 1999). Action research also pays attention to theory building, and the theories in action research often refer to action theory and change theory. Action theory describes how a project or a programme is designed and set up. It clarifies the mechanisms by which the activities are delivered, e.g. through which actors and which designed processes. Change theory is the articulation of how changes happen and how the outcomes of an initiative and project achieve through actions in a specific context. People developing or running projects or initiatives are often very aware of all the things they are doing. However, the steps of change to impact may not be clearly articulated or visible to them. These theories generated through action can be learned by other practitioners and impact professional practice in the future.

In short, like other practice research, action research is about learning how to provide “better” help through process evaluation and outcome evaluation which provides the best way to ensure the quality of intervention. It is also one of the appropriate methods to monitor ongoing “research” on the process of practice. It is a process of learning by doing through which researchers and local partners learn from each other and the best and acceptable way to tackle the problem commonly faced. In the following section, a case to demonstrate how social work researchers and practitioners work together to contribute to integrating action, practice, and research into a collaborative entity. It will answer several key questions that action research asked: how to practice knowledge has been generated and integrated into action processes; how can social work practice in rural China contribute to different ways of knowing or different kinds of knowledge; how indigenous knowledge has been created; what are the unique contributions of this action research to social work practice in China; to what extent participation is important to the practice and research relationship in Chinese social work.

A participatory action research of rural social work practice in Yunnan of China

Field site

In 2001, the Department of Applied Social Sciences (APSS) at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), the Department of Social Work at the Yunnan University, and the Shizhong County government in Yunnan Province jointly undertook an action research project entitled A Study of a Capacity Building Model for Poverty Alleviation in a Chinese Village – the Case of Yunnan. The main purpose of initiating this project was to develop a rural social work development model that fits the Chinese cultural context and could generate useful insights for rural social work practice in China. It was a transdisciplinary research team involving anthropology and social work scholars from Hong Kong as well as local university staff and students, agricultural experts, natural scientists and social workers in a village named Pingzhai, located in the Northeastern region of Yunnan province in Southwest China. Pingzhai is an ethnic minority village with more than 300 years of history. Today, it is an administrative village consisting of eight natural villages covering an area of 23 square kilometres. Its indigenous population consists mostly of members of the Zhuang ethnic minority group. According to 2000 census, the village had 347 households with a population of approximately 1,500. Only one tractor-ploughed road connected it to the nearby areas. Pingzhai was officially classified as a “poor” village in 2001 because the villagers could not provide themselves with basic food and clothing.

Discovering poverty and food insecurity in Pingzhai village

After choosing Pingzhai village as the project site, the first step was to obtain legitimacy from the local authority and build up a relationship with the local people. With the assistance of Yunnan University, the team signed an agreement with the local government to formally set up a social work station which served for multiple functions, e.g. office, training centre, community centre and practicum base.

The first stage of implementing action research involved identifying issues and problems and assessing needs to understand the challenges faced by farmers in the context of agrarian change in post-reform China. To get local people as our research partners, the team adopted the oral history method to identify the widespread problems of poverty and food insecurity in the village. In listening to their stories, we discovered that many villagers in Pingzha lived in poverty and paid exorbitant interest rates to borrow money to buy food, pay school fees and build houses.

For example, Mr Z, a father of two children aged 24 and 28, respectively, said in an interview that he earned less than CNY 4,000 per year from rice farming. As he said, “We earned only a few thousand yuan from selling rice and did not have other sources of income, though we had to spend a lot on purchasing machines for farming. We could not afford our grandchildren’s school fees. We had to borrow from others (Interview, 4 August 2012). Although his children left Pingzhai to work in cities, the money they sent home was not enough to help their parents get out of poverty. Apart from food, farming and fees, housing construction was a major expenditure item for villagers. The family of Mr W spent over CNY 50,000 to build a house with a debt of CNY 30,000 (Interview, 24 August 2012). Mr L, the father of two sons working in Jiangsu, said that although the family’s annual income was CNY10,000 per year, he had to spend over CNY 20,000 on medical expenses due to chronic illness.

Poverty means that many families suffer from periodic food shortages. Every year, more than 20 households in Pingzhai suffer from food shortages for four to six months. Sixty-two households and about 285 villagers had to rely on food donations to meet their nutritional needs. To combat poverty and food insecurity, the local government had tried to encourage agricultural modernisation by promoting high-tech commodity crops, year-round farming and other structural adjustment programmes. One of the most drastic changes in Pingzhai came when the government pushed for large-scale ginger cultivation in the mid-2000s as part of its “green revolution” initiatives. In order to achieve maximum production capacity, virgin forests were cut down to grow crops, which caused substantial ecological damage. More problematically, the ginger market collapsed over the next few years due to a nationwide oversupply of the crop. Prices plummeted to the point where farmers could not even recover the cost of production, let alone generate sufficient income to cover food and basic daily expenses. Mrs J clearly pointed out the failure of the government’s poverty reduction policy, “everyone said that China was rich in the 1980s, and every household lived a high quality of life. However, even with our effort, our village is still lagging behind. As for the government’s poverty alleviation projects, we have never seen any benefits. The government continued to promise us help, but we got nothing”.

The government’s embrace of the modernisation approach also contributed to the gradual replacement of conventional and commercial hybrid seeds and the loss of traditional farming techniques. The switch from conventional to commercial hybrid seeds created additional production costs in purchasing fertilisers and pesticides. Planting hybrid seeds also led to a marked deterioration in soil quality in Pingzhai, forcing farmers to purchase imported chemical fertilisers to maintain soil fertility. A villager said, “The soil quality is so bad now that it is impossible to farm without chemical fertilisers. At first, if we didn’t have the money to buy chemical fertilisers, we would stop using them. However, now fertilisers have to be used. Even if we don’t have the money, we have to borrow to buy fertilisers”. (Interview, September 2006). In terms of ginger production, farmers in Pingzhai needed to spend over CNY 500 on fertilisers imported from Belarus for every 400 kg of ginger they planted.

The use of hybrid seeds further required more intensive use of pesticides. Mr S, a villager, who had farmed in Pingzhai for more than 30 years, pointed out that changing to hybrid seeds had brought new pest problems. Moreover, it requires the use of chemical pesticides, “When I was growing traditional crop varieties 20 to 30 years ago, the pest problems were not severe. However, after the market reform and the rapid development of science and technology, a large number of new crop varieties have appeared on the market. These new seeds caused serious pest problems that are worsening every year” (Interview, 4 August 2012).

In short, Pingzhai increased villagers’ reliance on the market to obtain high-yielding seeds and chemical products, which exposed them further to market fluctuations and risks after the introduction of agricultural modernisation initiatives. Environmentally, the heavy use of hybrid seeds and chemicals exacerbated soil pollution while threatening villagers’ health and biodiversity. From a socio-cultural perspective, the push for modernisation led to the gradual loss of traditional farming skills and culture. The state-led agricultural commodification and marketisation forced farmers to abandon traditional practices because they believed their traditional values and life skills were no longer useful in the market economy and could not guarantee a stable source of income. The loss of self-esteem and identity within the community coincided with the decline of traditional agriculture. The oral history interviews provided us with evidence to support our action planning.

Adopting framework of social economy for action plan

In view of the poverty and food security crisis in Pingzhai village, after discussing with active villagers, the team thought we should pay attention to the sustainability of food and agricultural production, which was not only the issue in Pingzhai, but also in other parts of rural China. In recent years, alternative food networks have emerged in the various forms of farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture (CSA) and collective buying platforms organised by activists and consumers. These networks were partly with the New Rural Reconstruction Movement in China (Si, Schumilas, and Scott 2015; Si and Scott 2016). In social work, rural practitioners have also addressed the challenges by focusing on the relevance of linking sustainable food production and consumption to the social economy (Ku 2011; Connelly, Markey, and Roseland 2011; Wittman, Beckie, and Hergesheimer 2012; Zhang, Yeung, and Ku 2008).

The concept of “social economy” has become popular among social work scholars and practitioners in China. As Wright (2006) defines, social economy is “an economy organised in such a way as to serve the needs and aspirations of ordinary people, not elites”. For this to happen, it “must in some way or another be controlled by ordinary people – that is, subordinated to social power” (Wright 2006, 107). Social economy covers a wide range of organisations, including cooperatives, mutual aids and voluntary associations that engage in “economic activity with a social remit” (Smith 2005, 276). In contrast to capitalist for-profit corporations and public sector bureaucracies, social economy organisations are “rooted in the capacity to mobilise people for cooperative, voluntary collective actions’ in attaining developmental outcomes that emphasise social justice, economic equity and democratic empowerment” (Wright 2006, 106; see also Amin, Cameron, and Hudson 2002). The social economy offers a promising venue for developing green citizenship in orientating organisations towards the common good and providing the social infrastructure for democratic participation (Smith 2005). In food and agriculture, the social economy emphasises people-centred, community-based development, as well as the linkages and interconnectedness between the well-being of different economic subjects, including producers, consumers, inhabitants of the local community, and its impact on the cultural and environmental commons.

At a practical level, the social economy approach connects social work practice to the advocacy for environmental justice, something green social work has championed in recent years (Dominelli 2012). In focusing on the connections between humankind and the environmental commons, the social economy framework enables practitioners to understand the structural factors causing environmental problems and their significant social consequences. It also gives rural social workers insight into searching for emancipatory alternatives, thereby informing their practical strategies for social transformation. The theory of social economy guided our action research by challenging the market-led model of agricultural production that emphasises competitiveness, commodification and market demands at the expense of community needs. The objectives of this action research, therefore, included: 1) searching for a way of alternative development and poverty eradication; 2) returning to organic farming and green development; 3) promoting cooperatives to protect small peasants, traditional agriculture and the rural environment; 4) promoting farmers and consumers cooperation to increase producers’ income through the equal exchange of fair trade; 5) promoting Community Supporting Agriculture (CSA) to resist the capital monopoly and exploitation.

Forming rural cooperative and returning to organic farming

Guided by the framework of social economy, the team in this stage was to foster cooperation between rural producers and urban consumers. In the village, social workers encouraged villagers to return to organic farming and promote urban green consumption while simultaneously helping the locals increase their income, revitalising cultural identity, fostering community participation and cohesion, and protecting soil and seeds.

In Pingzhai, a rural cooperative was organised according to the democratic principles of social economy. The three key positions of director, deputy director and accountant were elected by members of the cooperative. The assembly of members also jointly reviewed annual production plans and decided on the area of farmland allocated for different kinds of crop production and the proportion of harvest for retail sales. The cooperative retained 5% of the revenue from annual sales, of which 2% was reserved for the development of local organisations and 3% was retained as collective economic resources for the cooperative’s development.

To encourage the return to organic farming, social workers organised meetings with villagers to discuss the value of organic farming and traditional farming skills. In recent years, there has been an increased concern about the need to protect traditional crops to preserve crop diversity. The need to ensure “seed sovereignty” has led to global calls for restoring traditional seeds to regain peasants’ freedom and right to access and reproduce seeds on their own (Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition 2013). Preserving traditional seeds allows farmers to reduce their reliance on chemicals and commercial seeds and enables the protection and transmission of traditional peasant cultures (van Niekerk and Wynberg 2017).

The first year of the experiment was successful, and the harvested organic rice was all sold out within a month. In July 2009, the producer cooperative was officially registered, and 14 households joined the cooperative. In 2014, the membership of the cooperative further expanded to 50 households, and the total area of farming reached 150 mu. Young farmers interviewed older villagers to learn how to control pests without the use of chemicals. Natural pesticides were produced using a combination of herbal medicine and plants. Villagers also experimented with different forms of ecological production, such as raising ducks in paddy fields. Ducks help prevent the infestation of pests and weeds, while their manure provides manure which can naturally fertilise the fields.

The establishment of the cooperative brought improvements in household income, the rural environment, as well as social relations in the village. In terms of income, using conventional seeds helped reduce production costs because expenditure on chemical fertilisers and pesticides could be eliminated. Mr C, who joined the cooperative in 2010 planting hongyou and fragrant rice, pointed out that he used to spend several thousand yuan on fertilisers and pesticides every year when growing hybrid seeds (Interview, 6 August 2012). Mr L also said that the price of a pack of compound fertiliser and urea was more than CNY 50 and CNY 100, respectively. If the size of farmland is large, the costs of fertilisers and pesticides could exceed CNY 2,000 (Interview, 4 August 2012). Using conventional seeds and organic farming helped keep costs down. Traditional seeds from the local area were cheaper and could be easily stored and preserved. The higher selling price of traditional crops also provides an additional economic incentive for villagers to switch to organic farming.

In addition to economic improvement, the return to organic farming also improved the village environment. As Mr J observed, “the most important thing is that we can save our own seeds and also protect the ecology without using chemicals, which is very good for our health” (Interview, 9 August 2012). After several years of organic farming, the research team found that the soil quality had improved significantly due to the long-term use of farmyard manure as natural fertilisers. Older villagers were delighted to find that clovers were back in the fields. According to these villagers, clovers used to grow on fertile farmland but had disappeared since the systematic use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Their reappearance was a sign that the land had regained fertility.

The formation of the cooperative helped foster a spirit of cooperation and solidarity among its members. The cooperative provided a platform for mutual assistance. One villager stated that when they were short of manpower due to family problems or illnesses, cooperative members could help each other with tasks such as harvesting crops (Interview, 4 August 2012). Cooperation also built a community network of rewards and sanctions, which helped ensure collective interests and mutual profitability. An older member of the cooperative, Mr Y, recounted his experience: “We check each other to make sure we don’t use fertilisers and pesticides. Everyone is affected when someone breaks the rules, like last year when one household used fertilisers, which affects all of us. […] Those who discovered traditional seeds were rewarded. Those who suffered from pest problems would receive collective support from the cooperative. All members would come together to discuss how we could help them” (Interview, 4 August 2012).

In conclusion, establishing the cooperative in Pingzhai provided villagers with an alternative pathway to agricultural production through the revival of organic farming. Moving beyond the modernisation approach that emphasises an industrialised, exogenous model of development, the case of Pingzhai demonstrates the potential of rural cooperation to help local farmers create sustainable sources of income that also protect the environment and strengthen community ties. The action lasted from 2006 to 2014, and the Table 1 below shows the important actions and outcomes.

Table 1. The timeline of important action and outcomes.

Timeline	Actions	Outcomes
June 2006-March 2007	Group meeting, community mobilisation, traditional seed seeking	12 kinds of traditional seeds were found, 1 mu of farmland was used to experiment 3 households were willing to try
March- September 2007	Returning to traditional farming: soil turning, seedling, irrigation, transplanting, fertilisation, harvesting	Methods of ecological agriculture The manufacture of ecological pesticides Planting of old varieties were tested
September – October 2007	Publicity in urban community, rice tasting, price negotiation, sales	Output 1 ton of rice Sell 1 ton of rice Establish consumer networks in two urban communities
… …
2009	Annual constant farming activities, the establishment of cooperatives, urban-rural interaction, harvest festival activities	The producer cooperative was formally registered 14 households joined the co-operative Total area of farming reached 50 mu
2014	In addition to the above activities, focusing on expanding the cooperatives	Consolidate the regulation of the cooperative The cooperative further expanded to a membership of 50 households The total area of farming reached 150 mu

Building rural–urban partnership

To sustain rural production, an important action was to support the local sale and distribution of agricultural products by facilitating direct marketing between producers and consumers. In the Pingzhai case, social workers played a key role in establishing links between rural producers and urban consumers. Strengthening rural-urban linkages enable sustainable food production within the framework of social economy. In the process, the team encouraged urban consumers and civil society to participate in sourcing and marketing locally produced agricultural products.

The action of building rural-urban partnerships was important in the context of food security in China. The structural shift in citizens’ food consumption patterns provides fertile ground for developing and strengthening the rural-urban partnership. Higher levels of household income and the rise of the Chinese middle class have contributed to a greater emphasis on food quality and nutritional well-being amongst consumers (Jussaume 2001; Huang and Gale 2009). Food scandals have further stimulated demand for green, ecological and pollution-free farm products. Organic food consumption in urban areas has been an emerging trend in recent years, with research finding that nearly a half of Chinese consumers are willing to pay higher price for organic products (Hasimu, Marchesini, and Canavari 2017; Li and Zhong 2017; Yu, Gao, and Zeng 2014).

For the Pingzhai project, rural-urban linkages were established by connecting rural producers with urban consumers in Kunming city, the capital of Yunnan Province. To help Pingzhai villagers promote their organic products in the urban areas, social workers played a key role in coordinating activities, and providing a platform for interaction between producers and consumers. First, partnering with a local university to hold public health talks in housing estates, inviting natural scientists and representatives from local NGOs to speak on the harms caused by chemical residues in food. In addition, urban residents interested in purchasing Pingzhai products were invited to visit the village and the land that produced the rice they consumed. Social workers helped coordinate the first visit by urban residents to Pingzhai in 2009. After an eight-hour drive from Kunming, urban residents were welcomed by villagers and invited to participate in the annual harvest festival organised by the rural cooperative. They witnessed first-hand the organic farming process used to produce the different varieties of organic rice.

To build a fair-trade relationship, social workers organised exchange meetings for price-setting between villagers and the urban residents. Urban residents were invited to taste the organic rice and negotiate the price directly with farmers. Following the principle of fair trade, the pricing of produce should be fair to the producers. At first, Kunming consumers expressed dissatisfaction when they found out that the price of organic rice was tripled that of non-organic rice purchased in supermarkets. Social workers invited representatives from the cooperative to explain to consumers the labour-intensive process of growing organic rice and how the price was calculated based on farmers’ actual labour input in the production process. After learning about the process, some older city residents showed their support to the villagers. It was because these residents had participated in the “Down to the Countryside Movement” during the Mao era, a policy enacted in the late 1960s and early 1970s in which urban youth were sent to rural hinterlands to learn the ways of the villagers. The seniors recounted their farming experience in the Movement, supporting the price proposed by Pingzhai villagers and convincing other urban consumers of the fairness of the price.

In 2010, social workers met with representatives of the property management company and the homeowners’ committee of a middle-class housing estate in Kunming. They also rent a ground-floor space to open a retail store for farm products produced in Pingzhai and surrounding villages. The opening of a retail store in Kunming city provides a stable sale channel for agricultural produce farmed in Pingzhai. This has a positive effect on attracting more villagers to adopt organic farming.

In addition to selling products, the store also provides a platform for cultivating a consumers-network to promote and sustain green consumption. One of the criticisms of the corporate food regime is the lack of linkages between producers and consumers (Robbins 2015). The disconnection between production and consumption can be improved by marketing locally and acquainting consumers directly with the producers and production methods. Direct price negotiation also enables a transparent and democratic decision-making process within the social economy. The annual harvest festival at Pingzhai became a platform for rural villagers and urban consumers to build long-term relationships. Engagement with urban customers has been recognised as a way to facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship among rural producers (Hinrichs, Gulespie, and Feenstra 2004). In this case, interaction allows city residents to become the quality controllers of rice production as they frequently visit the village. This is a basic for a rural-urban partnership that protects the interests of both groups: providing producers with a sustainable source of income and a means to maintain their traditional agricultural skills while guaranteeing food safety and health for consumers.

Evaluation of the action

According to Peter Reason (1988), the quality of action research is shaped by the priorities of choice and the way they are made and should be evaluated in terms of both the process and outcomes of practice with the principles of participation, appreciation and cooperation. There are five validity criteria for the quality control of action research, including outcome validity – the study leads to a resolution of the problem that “triggers” the study; process validity – to what extent problems are framed and solved in a manner that permits ongoing learning of the individual or system; democratic validity – to the extent that research is done in collaboration with all parties who have a stake in the problem under investigation; catalytic validity – the degree to which the research process reorients, focuses, and energises participants towards knowing reality in order to transform it; dialogic validity – the extent that the research methods, evidence and findings resonate with a community of practice. When evaluating the Pingzhai project, the team adopted both process evaluation and outcome evaluation to assess the effectiveness of the actions. The process evaluation emphasises dialogue with individuals in everyday life of practice. It ensures the process follows the principle of PAR by asking questions like: Are our actions conducted in a democratic way? How are the decisions made? Does it include or exclude someone? How many members are involved in the decision-making agenda? In what forms do they participate, are they only present at the meeting and express their opinions, or can they make a suggestion, participate in the full discussion, and make an emendation on the group agenda? How do reach a consensus in the process? Who plays a key role in decision-making? Etc.

Outcomes evaluation is to reflect on the proposal, work plan and its outcomes, examine the coherence among them, respond to the practical issues identified by all group members, and measure outcomes based on the action objectives. Table 2 shows how the objectives of the action research were achieved through what kinds of actions were supported by quantitative and qualitative evidence collected from the interview, statistics and field observation.

Table 2. Outcome evaluation.

Objectives	Actions	Indicators	Evidence
Searching for way of alternative development and poverty eradication	Ecological planting, cooperatives, urban-rural cooperation, fair trade	Income	Statistics
Returning to organic farming and green development	Search for traditional seeds, use old varieties, use organic fertilisers, use natural pesticides	Traditional seeds, organic fertiliser, natural pesticides	Field notes
Promoting cooperatives to protect small peasant, traditional agriculture and rural environment	Establish cooperatives, restore traditional farming, record traditional farming techniques, restore agrarian culture, protect old varieties, hold harvest festivals, field monitoring	Mutual labour, formulation of cooperation rules, establishment of community fund, cattle farming, seed species, land quality, plant changes	Statistics, field notes, interview
Promoting farmers and consumers cooperation to increase producers’ income through the equal exchange of fair trade	New rice tasting meeting, price negotiation meeting, urban-rural interactive activities, establishment of fair trade shop	Labour value, villagers’ income, sales volume of agricultural products	Statistics
Promoting Community Supporting Agriculture (CSA) to resist the capital monopoly and exploitation	Develop consumer networks, price negotiation meetings, urban-rural interactive activities, and establish fair trade stores	Villagers’ income, product price, sales volume of agricultural products, consumers’ evaluation	Statistics, interview

The project, over the years, helped tackle the problem of rural poverty. By 2014, the membership of the cooperative expanded to 50 households. The improvement of income of some of the newly joined cooperative members reflected the material incentives of villagers in switching to organic farming. Table 3 shows the changes in the annual income of 11 households before joining the cooperative in 2014 and after joining the cooperative in 2017. Almost all villagers had doubled their household income after joining the cooperative, except those whose crops had been partially affected by natural disasters in 2017. The higher price fetched by organic products has thus enabled villagers to improve their economic conditions. Other indicators of the effectiveness of the action research included such as include preserving 12 kinds of traditional seeds, reclaiming traditional wisdom of producing natural pesticides by using herbal medicine and other natural material by learning from older villagers and improving the soil quality by observing four leaves of grass growing in the field after practising organic farming.

Table 3. Income of households before and after joining the cooperative.

Cooperative member	Farmland area (mu)	Annual income before joining cooperative, 2014 (CNY)	Annual income after joining cooperative, 2017 (CNY)	Crops planted
1	2	3,500	8,200	Black rice, hongyou rice
2	3	5,500	12,000	Black rice, hongyou Rice, red yeast rice
3	2	3,500	8,560	Black rice
4	1	1,800	3,800	Hongyou rice
5	1.5	2,400	2,800	Hongyou rice
6	3	5,500	13,000	Black rice, hongyou rice, crystal rice, black glutinous rice
7	2	3,500	8,200	Hongyou rice, black rice
8	2.5	4,300	5,500	Hongyou rice, crystal rice, glutinous rice
9	3.5	6,200	14,500	Hongyou rice, fragrant rice, eight-treasure rice
10	2	3,500	8,400	Red yeast rice, hongyou rice
11	2	3,500	8,300	Red yeast rice, hongyou rice

Conclusion

This article shows how the practice of social economy through rural social work constitutes a local, bottom-up response to the challenges faced by rural communities in contemporary China. Based on action research in Yunnan, the article has examined the possibility of rural social work in responding to the agrarian and environmental issues in the Chinese countryside. Rather than allowing capital to freely invade rural society, commodifying farmland and dispossessing farmers of their means of production and livelihoods, it is better to advocate a bottom-up approach that considers rural reality and builds upon the foundations of rural society to develop the rural economy. Specifically, the case of Pingzhai demonstrates how sustainable food production and consumption can be linked with the social economy to prioritise the developmental needs of communities and individuals while respecting the environment. In supporting the development of a producer cooperative and the sale of rural products to urban consumers, this action research of rural social work has built up the rural-urban alliance model in supporting sustainable transformation. The rural-urban alliance model emphasises community-supporting agriculture, linking rural cooperatives with the local food system and allowing farmers to sell directly to urban consumers at fairer prices, which has provided a viable pathway for sustainable transformation. This model has been applied to other places, such as Guangdong, Sichuan and Hunan, and positively impacted rural communities’ development.

Going forward, the sustainable development of the Pingzhai project will depend on overcoming several challenges. Not all farmers in the village have joined the cooperative and switched to organic farming, which means that the farmland for organic production is not contiguous. Co-op members pointed out that farmland pollen from farmland. Using hybrid seeds could spread easily to farmland using organic methods if there is no contiguous farmland. Hybrid seeds require a large number of chemicals to grow, which could leak and pollute the soil of neighbouring organic farmland. Further encouraging participation in rural cooperation within the village community could improve these problems. It would also allow villagers to have a better division of labour between households and make more resources available for the collective purchase of farm equipment.

While its ongoing development provides empirical data for further research, the Pingzhai experience thus far has valuable implications for rural social work in China and the world. Moving beyond a corporate-led growth model typically built on the commodification of land and labour, the practice of social economy in rural China demonstrates an alternative model of rural social work that embeds the economy within social relations while promoting environmentally sustainable practices. As a guiding concept for social work practice, social economy integrates people and their socio-cultural, economic and physical environments into an egalitarian framework that has the potential to address dominant structural inequalities and unequal distribution of power and resources. It is pluralistic, bottom-up, democratic, and non-monopolistic and prioritises local communities’ needs. The rural-urban alliance model generated in this rural social work action research offers useful insights for tackling agrarian challenges and moving towards sustainable rural development.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).