Nicholas Loubere

Social Support and the ‘Left Behind’ Elderly in Rural China: A Case Study from Jiangxi Province

This study examines the living situation of elderly people in rural China whose children have left to work in other areas [the ‘left behind’ elderly (LBE)] and explores policy implications associated with their care. Based on survey data and interviews conducted in three villages in Jiangxi Province, China, we compare the living situation of the LBE and the ‘non-left behind’ elderly (NLBE). The data reveal that the LBE are relatively more isolated and that they spend less time interacting with neighbors and more time watching television. The study shows that the LBE have a much greater need for care services than income maintenance. Also, the LBE group has less social capital than the NLBE group. Based on our findings, it is clear that the proposal to use social capital and informal care cannot effectively meet all the needs of the LBE group. Instead, it is recommended that a comprehensive system of social support is developed.

Indebted to development: microcredit as (de)marginalisation in rural China

Microcredit schemes have been increasingly incorporated into development policies that aim to de-marginalise rural China. Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork, this paper examines the various roles that microcredit programmes play in development outcomes at the local level. It demonstrates that microcredit has the ability to facilitate the de-marginalisation of certain individuals/groups, while simultaneously (re)producing inequalities, thus exacerbating the marginalisation of others. This finding demonstrates that microcredit does not induce uniform, predictable and linear development through the integration of marginal places and people into the formal financial system and wider economy. Instead, microcredit programmes reflect and reinforce the interlocking sets of unequal relationships that are the root cause of marginality and underdevelopment in China. Through this detailed analysis of the contradictory outcomes of Chinese microcredit programmes, this paper provides the basis for a wider relational critique of microcredit as an intervention aimed at inducing a specific type of market-oriented linear development that is beneficial for some and detrimental for others.

The Policy and Practice of Microcredit in Rural China: Toward a Relational Understanding of Heterogeneous Implementation:

Much research on rural development interventions in China has found substantial variation in their implementation at the local level. These studies often analyze the reasons for this heterogeneity by identifying variables responsible for influencing (or distorting) interventions as they travel from central formulation to local implementation. Through an in-depth ethnographic examination of the local implementation of one of China’s largest microcredit programs in three townships in rural Jiangxi province, this article challenges the dominant depiction of external development interventions as reified and linear, and instead proposes a relational approach to understanding local heterogeneity. This approach reveals implementation outcomes to be emergent from negotiations between diverse sets of actors at different levels. At the same time, it becomes clear that microcredit implementation reflects the contradictions implicit in China’s political economy of development. This points to two levels of implementation “relationality,” which results in unpredictable semi-chaotic variation, while simultaneously reproducing wider developmental relations.