Civic Duty, Moral Responsibility, and Reciprocity: An Ethnographic Study on Resident-volunteers in the Neighbourhoods of Beijing

This paper, which is based on ethnographic field research, analyses the system of resident-volunteers in the neighbourhoods of Beijing. Between co-optation networks, surveillance missions, ritualised practices, and ordinary exchanges of sociability amongst neighbours, volunteering is an interesting...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:China perspectives 2017-01, Vol.2017 (3 (111)), p.47-56
Main Authors: AUDIN, JUDITH, Guill, Elizabeth
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acquaintances
Activists
Alliances
Authoritarianism
Citizen participation
Citizens
Citizens' associations
Committees
Economic reform
Employment
Ethnography
Ethnology
Fieldwork
Housing
Local elections
Moral responsibility
Morality
Neighborhoods
Networks
Obligations
Participation
Political activism
Political participation
Production
Public order
Reciprocity
Reciprocity (Commerce)
Retirees
Retirement
Sociability
Social aspects
Social control
Social networks
Society
Sociopolitical factors
Surveillance
Voluntarism
Volunteers
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Summary:This paper, which is based on ethnographic field research, analyses the system of resident-volunteers in the neighbourhoods of Beijing. Between co-optation networks, surveillance missions, ritualised practices, and ordinary exchanges of sociability amongst neighbours, volunteering is an interesting form of citizen participation in urban China. The volunteer networks are made up of inhabitants who are selected and involved through the norms of civic duty, personal acquaintance, moral obligation, or persuasion, in order to contribute to the production of local public order. Finally, this specific form of voluntarism reveals, from the perspective of retired people, how shared socio-political practices are created and perpetuated within an institutional volunteering system.
ISSN:2070-3449
1996-4617
DOI:10.4000/chinaperspectives.7411