Journal Article•
The Struggle for Sustainability in Rural China: Environmental Values and Civil Society
TL;DR: The Struggle for Sustainability in Rural China: Environmental Values and Civil Society, by Bryan Tilt as discussed by the authors combines various methodologies including seven months of residence and participant observation in Futian, semistructured interviews, survey questionnaires with government officials, industrial workers, farmers and State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) scientists and bureaucrats, as well as attendance of township government meetings.
Abstract: The Struggle for Sustainability in Rural China: Environmental Values and Civil Society, by Bryan Tilt. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. xviii +192 pp. US$89.50/£62.00 (hardcover), US$29.50/£20.50 (paperback). Bryan Tilt's remarkable monograph has an importance that cannot be overstated. The book portrays the often horrifying conditions precipitated by a confluence of development targets, privatization of industry and growing uncertainty amongst farming communities. Much of the literature on environmental pollution in China recites a macroscale mantra of the central state producing policies which local governments are too corrupt to enforce. By contrast, Tilt presents a much needed informative and detailed account of the lived realities of pollution victims, pollution perpetrators and regulatory agents. The study combines various methodologies including seven months of residence and participant observation in Futian, semistructured interviews, survey questionnaires with government officials, industrial workers, farmers and State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) scientists and bureaucrats, as well as attendance of township government meetings. Ethnographic methods in particular have enabled Tilt to provide a humanizing picture of actors all too often written off as corrupt. Here is an engrossing account of grassroots understanding of pollution, development and environmental values as they are situated in particular socio-political contexts. After a brief preface, the book is divided into 8 chapters, including an introduction and a conclusion. Chapters one and two provide some solid general background on China's recent history and how it has played out in the research setting of Futian, a township situated on the western edge of the heavily industrialized Panzhihua municipality, in Sichuan. Tilt traces the rise of a development imperative during the Maoist years, and its emphasis on rural industrialization. In the late Mao and early reform periods, Futian experienced what most locals remember fondly as a golden age of industrial development, when revenue from local industry was used to develop local infrastructure. By the late 1990s this communitarian ethic had fully given way to privatization, as local industries were sold to outsiders. The profit from small and low-tech polluting industries such as Futian' s zinc smelter, coking plant and coal-washing plant ceased to benefit the local community and government to the same extent, and these industries were eventually closed for noncompliance with environmental protection regulations. The effects of these changes on the relationships among the local community, industry and the local state are examined further in chapters three and four. Where previously critiquing local industries for causing pollution would have amounted to attacking the state itself, privatization opened space for a critical assessment of their impact. That benefits were no longer distributed to the local communities also increased incentives to complain about pollution. Other studies have already examined the complexities of enforcing environmental protection regulation due to inadequate staffing and ambiguous responsibilities. Tilt gives us a real sense of the scope of these problems. The size of the Renhe district's Environmental Protection Bureau's enforcement team - consisting of three technicians and the monitoring station chief and charged with overseeing more than 120 factories across 14 townships - is grossly inadequate. Despite this, the local population is shown to be acutely aware of pollution, belying assumptions that those in economic dire straits are too poor to care about the environment. A key strength of this study lies in its questioning of the very terms of the debate: what is deemed worthy of protection? What, in the discourse of sustainable development, is to be sustained? What is to be developed? Predictably, the answers vary with the speaker, as do the pathways of action which are premised upon them. …
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References
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Posted Content•
TL;DR: The authors argue that one way to understand the Chinese state is to view it from below, from the perspective of people advocating change, illustrated with accounts of Chinese lawyers, journalists and NGO leaders who operate at the boundary of the acceptable and are attentive to signals about what the authorities will tolerate.
Abstract: In this conceptual essay, we argue that one way to understand the Chinese state is to view it from below, from the perspective of people advocating change. Our "state reflected in society" approach is illustrated with accounts of Chinese lawyers, journalists and NGO leaders who operate at the boundary of the acceptable and are attentive to signals about what the authorities will tolerate. Their experiences suggest that mixed signals about the limits of the permissible is a key feature of the Chinese state. Beyond a number of well-patrolled "forbidden zones," the Chinese state speaks with many voices and its bottom line is often unclear. At the border of the uncontroversial and the unacceptable, the Chinese state is both a high-capacity juggernaut capable of demarcating no-go zones and a hodgepodge of disparate actors ambivalent about what types of activism it can live with. Whether mixed signals are deliberate or accidental is hard to determine, but they do offer the authorities certain advantages by providing a low cost way to contain dissent, gather information and keep options open.
120 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine pollution in the rural industrial sector and its implications for community health and explore how community members understand the linkages between air and water pollution from nearby factories and their health and well-being.
Abstract: After more than three decades of extremely rapid industrial growth, China faces an environmental public health crisis. In this article, I examine pollution in the rural industrial sector and its implications for community health. Drawing on recent ethnographic research in an industrial township in rural Sichuan, including interviews with government officials, environmental regulators, industrial workers and local residents, I explore how community members understand the linkages between air and water pollution from nearby factories and their health and well-being. The article has two main goals. The first is to examine the various ways in which uncertainty about pollution sources, about the severity of pollution levels and about the links between pollution and human health shapes villagers’ experiences of pollution on a day-to-day basis. The second goal is to examine the rising trend of “individualization” taking place in China today and explore how this process is related to people’s experiences of toxic exposure. I consider the implications of this trend for how social scientists should approach the study of environmental illness in contemporary China.
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