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CIAO DATE: 3/5/2007
Development of the civil realm in Shanghai environmental politics
Seungho Lee
May 2003
Abstract
This chapter analyses the development in the civil realm of environmental politics in Shanghai. This study is an effort to identify environmental communities based on Mary Douglas's grid/group theory and an attempt to comprehend the nature of the dynamic interaction of the private and the public spheres, particularly within the public sphere between the state (the Shanghai government) and ethical social entities (environmental NGOs and other social groups). The contribution of the study lies in its revelation of how the civil realm in Shanghai has developed with a self-capacity to redress environmentally unfriendly policies over the last decade. Fieldwork carried out in 2002 identified a number of environmental Non Governmental Organisations, NGOs, and other social groups in Shanghai. It proved to be possible to highlight the recent emergence of environmental NGOs, including university students based organisations. The study evaluates how these groups have evolved and have survived in the transitional period in alliance with Government Organised NGOs, GONGOs, local communities (shequ), the media, international NGOs and the government. Although these environmental groups now commit themselves to various environmental issues, Shanghai does not have any particular NGO mainly engaged in freshwater issues.1 It is concluded that a collaboration of GONGOs, NGOs, and various environmental groups alongside international NGOs has led to the formation of a civil force that impacts Shanghai's environmental policy- making.
In order to lead to a comprehensive understanding of the current dynamics in the Shanghai civil realm, it is useful to identify a theoretical framework relating the private and the public sphere to grid/group theory. In relation to grid/group theory, the private sphere includes the Entrepreneurs and the Fatalists, and the public sphere the Hierarchists and the Egalitarians. There were only two main actors in Chinese society before 1949 and even during the pre-reform era there were also only two, the Hierarchists, the Shanghai government, and the Fatalists, the masses.
