This important volume provides a source of information on the key issues, including constraints and capacity building, necessary to implement participatory approaches in China today. A wealth of case studies are provided by principal Chinese academics and practitioners in forestry, natural resource management, rural development, irrigation and poverty alleviation. At the core, the book is about strengthening local government as a key player in the development of participatory initiatives. It is an invaluable text for development practitioners, donors, researchers and students seeking to understand the opportunities and constraints for participation in China, and for those working to institutionalize participatory processes in a complex rural context.

This important volume provides a source of information on the key issues, including constraints and capacity building, necessary to implement participatory approaches in China today. A wealth of case studies are provided by principal Chinese academics and practitioners in forestry, natural resource management, rural development, irrigation and poverty alleviation. At the core, the book is about strengthening local government as a key player in the development of participatory initiatives. It is an invaluable text for development practitioners, donors, researchers and students seeking to understand the opportunities and constraints for participation in China, and for those working to institutionalize participatory processes in a complex rural context.

This important volume provides a source of information on the key issues, including constraints and capacity building, necessary to implement participatory approaches in China today. A wealth of case studies are provided by principal Chinese academics and practitioners in forestry, natural resource management, rural development, irrigation and poverty alleviation. At the core, the book is about strengthening local government as a key player in the development of participatory initiatives. It is an invaluable text for development practitioners, donors, researchers and students seeking to understand the opportunities and constraints for participation in China, and for those working to institutionalize participatory processes in a complex rural context.

This volume argues that using social capital to eradicate poverty is unlikely to succeed because its mainstream approach mistakenly assumes that social capital necessarily benefits poor people. The inadequacy of that assumption, Sam Wong argues, calls for a reassessment of human motivations, institutional dynamics, and the complexity of structures in social capital building. Proposing a “pro-poor” perspective, in which poverty-specific outcomes are highlighted, he suggests an exploration of “unseen” social capital is in order—not only to challenge the mainstream understanding of “seen” social capital, but to demonstrate the need for everyday cooperation, which is shaped by social norms, influenced by conscious and unconscious motivations, and subject to changes in priority based on livelihood. A useful volume for both policy makers and practitioners, Exploring ‘Unseen’ Social Capital in Community Participation offers a fresh perspective in thinking about civic and social agency.

What, if anything, is similar about citizen participation at the local level in Canada and China? The answer, of course, is politically sensitive. There are many in Canada who would claim that the question is absurd. How can there be meaningful citizen participation in a country where there are significant restrictions on political activity, including on the right to form organizations with political purposes? Presenting the work of leading scholars, Citizen Participation at the Local Level in China and Canada examines how citizens in each country participate at the local level. The book examines the development of citizen participation in local governance in Canada and China respectively. It then covers the characteristics of political culture and climate on local participation, highlighting factors especially unique to urban poor, class migration, and aboriginal and immigrant populations. The chapters also explore means of protest, demonstration, and articulation of preference by populations and issues where citizen participation has effected change such as land use, housing, urban development, and resource sustainability. The book includes case studies that compare Canadian and Chinese communities and extrapolate interesting policy-level changes at the local level based on citizen behavior and involvement. It underscores the similarities and differences in political participation in both countries and sets the stage for the steps in the citizen participation in both countries.

This book aims to make sense of the recent reform of neighbourhood institutions in urban China. It builds on the observation that the late 1990s saw a comeback of the state in urban China after the increased economization of life in the 1980s had initially forced it to withdraw. Based on several months of fieldwork in locations ranging from poor and dilapidated neighbourhoods in Shenyang City to middle class gated communities in Shenzhen, the authors analyze recent attempts by the central government to enhance stability in China’s increasingly volatile cities. In particular, they argue that the central government has begun to restructure urban neighbourhoods, and has encouraged residents to govern themselves by means of democratic procedures. Heberer and Göbel also contend that whilst on the one hand, the central government has managed to bring the Party-state back into urban society, especially by tapping into a range of social groups that depend on it, it has not, however, managed to establish a broad base for participation. In testing this hypothesis, the book examines the rationales, strategies and impacts of this comeback by systematically analyzing how the reorganization of neighbourhood committees was actually conducted and find that opportunities for participation were far more limited than initially promised. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese Studies, Development Studies, Urban Studies and Asian Studies in general.

Using household data specifically collected for the purpose of evaluation, Coady, Dai, and Wang empirically evaluate the impact on household income of a rural program in China that focuses on increasing women's economic and social participation in the local community. They find that the program substantially increases women's participation and household income, and also generates positive social benefits.

China is forecast to be the primary tourist destination and tourist-generating country by 2020. However, much of the writing on tourism in China has come from people within the English academic world who are not involved in the issues related to Chinese tourism development. This book provides a voice to Chinese mainland academic researchers and examines the nature of tourism research and tourism development in China. Contributors, many of whom are based in China and are immersed in the daily issues of teaching, researching and planning tourism development within China, discuss issues related to resource use, destination image and community participation with case studies that combine conceptual frameworks and practical issues. This authoritative text on tourism in China will be of interest to scholars and students of tourism throughout the world.

This edited collection investigates the human dimension of urban renewal, using a range of case studies from Africa, Asia, Europe, India and North America, to explore how the conception and delivery of regeneration initiatives can strengthen or undermine local communities. Ultimately aiming to understand how urban residents can successfully influence or manage change in their own communities, contributing authors interrogate the complex relationships between policy, planning, economic development, governance systems, history and urban morphology. Alongside more conventional methods, analytical approaches include built form analysis, participant observation, photographic analysis and urban labs. Appealing to upper level undergraduate and masters' students, academics and others involved in urban renewal, the book offers a rich combination of theoretical insight and empirical analysis, contributing to literature on gentrification, the right to the city, and community participation in neighbourhood change.