Green social work and its implications for social development in China

Green social work has been significant in introducing new issues into environmental debates and increasing its centrality to social work practice. These have included: the mainstreaming of environmental considerations; a widening of the theoretical and practice base to ensure that social and environmental justice are considered integral to any environmental involvement by social workers; highlighting the need to think of innovative approaches to socio-economic development; and making disaster interventions core elements in the social work repertoire of knowledge, skills, capacity building and curriculum formulation. This paper considers the challenges of China’s rapid industrialisation and its implications for rural people migrating into cities, the urban populations that receive them and environmental degradation. It introduces the idea of green social work and discusses the implications of green social work for social development in China in the context of environmental crises precipitated by the country’s rapid economic development

Not only Eating Together: Space and Green Social Work Intervention in Hazard-Affected Area in Ya’an, Sichuan, China

A 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Lushan county of Ya’an city, Sichuan Province, China, on 20 April 2013. The Lushan earthquake damage is less than the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake’s, where 70,000 houses collapsed and 2 million people across nineteen prefectures and 115 counties of Sichuan province were affected. Temple Village (fictitious name), an old village in S township, was chosen as an intervention site. As most young adults went to work in the city, the old community became dilapidated and its traditional culture, architecture, custom, skill and wisdom were dying. Social workers were unable to tackle fully this community’s multiple needs, especially those associated with environmental and physical spaces linked to notions of belonging and identity, on their own. A transdisciplinary action research team in which social workers operated hand in hand with the disciplines of architectural design became the means for exploring an alternative model of post-disaster community reconstruction that would enhance the quality of life of left-behind people in this disaster-affected community. Working together, the research team facilitated the formation of a community kitchen project that enabled villagers to create a new building and co-operative organisations for the village’s long-term sustainable development. This paper presents the participatory design process, contribution of green social work and transdisciplinary interventions in post-disaster community reconstruction

China at the crossroads: Social economy as the new way of development

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Social Economy in China and the World

© 2016 Ngai Pun, Ben Hok-bun Ku, Hairong Yan and Anita Koo. All rights reserved.Thirty years of economic transformation have changed China and turned it into one of the major players in the global capitalist economy. However, China's economic growth has generated rising problems in inequality, alienation, and sustainability. The crises that gave birth to experiments in social or solidarity economy are the "agrarian crises" of the late 1990s, and the continuous migration and labor conflicts, both being problems of systemic sustainability. "Agrarian crisis" refers to the intertwined problems in sustaining rural production, rural community, and rural livelihood. Three decades ago, the rural reform instituted a separation between ownership and management of farm land. While the ownership of farm land remains collective, the reform made land use and management rights household based. Since the 1990s, much of rural China has seen a decline in agricultural production, the fragmentation and atomization of community life, and difficulties in community cultural reproduction. The family-based peasant economy could neither achieve productivity nor sustain social reproduction, making it difficult to increase the farmers' income, and impossible to develop economic activities other than agriculture in rural areas.Link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Series editors' preface

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Asset-Building Policies and Innovations in Asia

Asia has long been a testing ground for efforts to augment financial and social security by developing assets that may support individuals and households and contribute to long-term social development. Rapid growth in the number and breadth of asset-based social policies has prompted Asian scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to share lessons from current efforts and chart future directions. This book offers a unique collection of macro- and micro-level analyses on asset-based social development and compares and contrasts national social policies across the Asia Pacific region. Many asset-building policies and programmes have been undertaken in Asia, and innovative proposals continue to emerge. The contributions in this book present and assess this broad, often nuanced, and evolving landscape, and offer an insightful analysis of the evolution of asset-building policies, innovative programmes in rural populations, asset-based interventions to facilitate the development and well-being of children, as well as case studies on new, ground-breaking asset-building projects. Asset-Building Policies and Innovation in Asia will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Asian social policy, social welfare, social development and social work