Community Reconstruction after the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake: A Reflection on Participatory Development Theories

The participation of China’s civil society in the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake reconstruction featured a number of NGOs and social work organizations. Additionally, participatory development theories were broadly accepted and applied in their community efforts. However, our three-year field work effort in an earthquake-stricken village finds that those theories, based as they are on the presumption of alienated traditional communities, are being confronted with great challenges. Applying the extended case method, we claim that, quite contrary to a single and closed self-recovery, community reconstruction is deeply embedded in and reshaped by a series of much broader social processes: state-dominated post-disaster reconstruction, urban-rural integration development, and social management measures. We further recognize three major forces constructing those social processes: neo-authoritarian local governments, victims with rising citizenship awareness, and community-based NGOs. Redefining the power structure in community reconstruction, we argue that, instead of the traditional bottom-up empowerment approach, in open communities pluralistic governance, through the collaboration of governments, residents, and NGOs, can work more effectively to empower communities and reach sustainable development