Social knowledge production and urban grassroots governance in Guangzhou's government purchase of social work policy

Abstract

This thesis implements an interdisciplinary perspective of sociology, politics, urban studies, and political economy. It develops a knowledge-space approach to explore a grassroots governance policy in China, the government purchase of social work services (GPSW) policy. The thesis contributes to both theoretical and empirical exploration. For theoretical exploration, the knowledge-space approach provides a unique tool that explores heterogeneous beliefs and strategies of actors in space and uses a bottom-up framework to explain integrated space reproduction. For empirical research, the thesis explores GPSW policy which is underresearched from the perspectives of detailed policy actors and integrated spatial dynamics. GPSW policy involves professional social workers in China’s socialist contexts and represents an initial effort of grassroots governance innovation and public service decentralization. However, the policy finally leads to intensified state control and the transition has not been well explained. The thesis thoroughly examines policy actors and shows that GPSW policy is historically shaped by multiple actors’ adaptations and has ultimately reproduced China’s grassroots space’s control mechanisms, state leadership and capacity, and actors’ knowledge. The theoretical exploration settles the problems in revealing actors, combining mixed mechanisms, and visualizing integrated spatial processes and builds up the knowledge-space approach. The thesis first rescrutinizes the concept of knowledge and reframes it as a fundamental representation of actors revealing their combined and personalized considerations in decision-making and following unique rationales. Then, the knowledge-space approach uses knowledge as an approach to visualize space reproduction. It views space as a spontaneous process based on the actor’s adaptations. Furthermore, according to the knowledge-space approach, the thesis develops a practical framework that includes knowledge- and actor-based data collection, evolutionary analysis, and knowledge production, and then applies it to empirical research. The empirical research reveals the role of GPSW policy in reproducing China’s state-led regime at actor, mechanism, and space levels. Based on in-depth interviews, participatory observation, and diverse archives, this thesis reveals that at the actor level, knowledge gaps and structural and historical embeddedness shape actors’ different incentives and behaviors. At the level of space mechanisms, the thesis finds, first, social workers in GPSW policy are located in their positions by combined control mechanisms. Second, the policy contributes to a new stage of China’s political crisis management. Third, the policy represents an entrepreneurial strategy of the state to achieve controlled professionalization. Finally, at the level of space reproduction, the thesis proposes an infrastructural thinking theory and defines GPSW policy as an emerging ring in the state-led reproduction of civic infrastructure. By providing a new perspective for revisiting actors’ knowledge and revealing the GPSW policy’s social space, this thesis has implications for GPSW policy and provides actor-based suggestions. Based on its methods and findings, the thesis also contributes by identifying knowledge as a basic lens of social research and building a model of development sociology and practical urban theories based on empirical exploration. Finally, by highlighting personal knowledge and revisiting the liberation of knowledge, the thesis also builds a new perspective on rationality and modernity.