‘Newness’ in Social Entrepreneurship Discourses: The Concept of ‘Danwei’ in the Chinese Experience

Abstract

It has been suggested that the concept of danwei functions as a key structural element within Chinese urban society (R. Sévigny, S. Chen, and E.Y. Chen, 2009, Personal experience of schizophrenia and the role of danwei: a case study on 1990's Beijing, Cult Med Psychiatry, 33, 86–111). However, the relevance of the danwei to social entrepreneurship in China has not yet been identified let alone fully mapped out. Instead, the discourse relating to social entrepreneurship in China has typically been driven by Anglo-American models of entrepreneurship that emphasize novelty, whilst marginalizing the more established traditions of social movements within Chinese society. This has potentially significant implications for the concept, and project, of social entrepreneurship in China. In addition, western notions of social entrepreneurship can be enriched by the consideration of ‘oriental’ categories ofthought. This paper shows how the concept of social entrepreneurship tends to ‘evolve in its specific environment’ (J. Defourny and S.-Y. Kim, 2011, Emerging models of social enterprise in Eastern Asia: a cross-country analysis, Social enterprise journal, 7 (1), 86–111) and suggests that the evolution of the discourse and meanings of social entrepreneurship is rarely politically neutral or uncontested.

Key Words:

• Social enterprise
• danwei
• China

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Richard Sanders of the University of Northampton for a long walk on a hot night in Beijing and the discussions that led to this ‘danwei’ theme. The author is also grateful to the British Council Prime Ministers initiative (PMI2) for funding the exchange programme with Capital University of Economics and Business in Beijing. Many thanks also to Alex Nicholls for his constructive critique of early drafts.

Notes

Non-Profit Incubator (NPI) is a non-profit and non-governmental organization (NGO) registered in Pudong District, Shanghai.

Chinese words are presented in italics but names of people are not.

A thick description of a social phenomenon is one that explains not just the behaviour, but its context as well, such that the behaviour becomes meaningful to an outsider.

Actually, they are officially banned from ‘undertaking profit-making commercial activities’, but are allowed to register as organizations operating as a business in education, health care, sports, science and technology research and consulting, social welfare, legal services and others (Yu and Zhang 2009, p. 10).

To prohibit internal migration, residents were not allowed to work or live outside the administrative boundaries of their household registration without the approval of the danwei authorities. Once they left their place of registration, they would also leave behind all of their rights and benefits.