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COPYRIGHT 2007 The Institute Inc.
Introduction
The purpose of this article is to define and explain a gap between institutional claims for a rural energy development project and its observed outcome. This gap was the dual result of the incompatibility of western norms of business culture with Chinese cultural practices involving guanxi (connections), dengji (hierarchy), and zhengji (official accomplishments) as well as flawed bureaucratic processes related to project oversight. We carried out a social, economic and environmental assessment (SEEIA) during a period of three years which documented project failures and the events and social context in which they were rooted. Our empirical work was consistent with the theoretical and speculative critique of development in anthropology which emphasizes studying the "local" (Ferguson 1995: 168) and "allowing local people to define their own interests in their own terms" (Escobar 1995b: 214).
During our research and reporting on the project we encountered an officially sanctioned and persistent and distorted "narrative" or "discourse of development" (Escobar 1997) that was inconsistent with onsite observations. In this case the international institution (United Nations Development Program [UNDP]) for which we prepared our assessment and the provincial administrative agency in China represented the project in the abstract as a success. Both the international and provincial institutions resisted learning from feedback and experience in the local context. Riall Nolan (2002: 233) notes that development agencies have "difficulty learning from experience." He alludes to "the wreckage of littered projects of the past"(Nolan 2002: 240) and suggests, "Despite all that has been written about project planning and development, we really know very little--in an ethnographic sense--about how projects actually develop; about the way in which stakeholders at multiple levels negotiate meaning and outcomes with each other." He calls for "project ethnography" to provide, "the thick description of project events that is now largely lacking in development documentation" (Nolan 2002: 214). Popkins (2005: 97) also calls for "case studies which document and analyze social analysis in China," and show "how the 'research encounter' interacts with the operation of power and normative processes ..." Accordingly, we explore the processes involved in derailing a particular development plan in Northeast China, as well as institutional failure to learn and associated preference for obfuscating project failure.
Our case study in one sense offers yet another example of development as a process that bolsters ineffective bureaucracy and falls prey to local politics. However, in another sense rural Chinese energy development is a special case: China's historical success in providing rural energy has created an extensive network of administrative and technical capacity. At present government, administrative, and macroeconomic structures, as well as village economic structures, are in rapid transition toward capitalism and commercialism. China's collective capacity for successful development projects may be threatened by such change as well as by remotely orchestrated projects that do not effectively internalize local feedback and fail to contend with a particular cultural context.
In this case the project was a village-level, renewable energy (biomass) factory, located in an urbanizing village in Northeast China and funded jointly by the UNDP and Jilin Province. The mission of UNDP is as follows: "UNDP is the UN's development agency focused on poverty reduction, advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people have a better life" (www.undp. org.cn). In recent years the agency's programs have addressed such problems as water pollution, air pollution, solid waste, climate change, impacts of a gas pipeline, the stigma of AIDS, gender inequality, illiteracy and infant mortality. The purpose of the renewable energy project was to construct a prototype demonstration facility to gasify field residue, mostly consisting of corn stalks, to produce gas for cooking and heating in village houses and electricity for sale to the regional power grid. The engineering design and theoretical prospects for biomass energy development are well documented (Fischer 2001; Liu et al. 2001; Kartha and Larson 2000; Liu et al. 2003; Reddy 1999; Hall and Scrase 1998; Reddy et al. 1997). However, as Willoughby (1990: 342) and others pointed out some time ago, human factors are always associated with technological processes, and "appropriate technology ... requires the participation of the people it is intended to serve."
We were part of an investigation team on three occasions to assess the social, economic and environmental impacts of the project on the local community. On the first evening after our arrival a provincial official warned us that an investigation such as the one we were about to undertake was not consistent with "Chinese custom." Our experience in the field later confirmed that our role was suspect. One or more local officials usually accompanied us throughout the day, went with us to people's homes, and sat in on interviews, although supervision waned as we gained more trust in the community. We made a fourth private trip to the site two years after the conclusion of the project to confirm its long-term prospects. At this stage we were free on our own initiative to chat with earlier acquaintances and visit two smaller-scale biomass projects in other villages in the township.
Background
The village of Hechengli is located 1.5 kilometers from the market town and township center of Longjing in Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. At the time of our research, its population consisted of 728 people spread among 224 households, the vast majority of dominant Han Chinese ethnic group. Its total land area was only 59 hectares, not extensive enough either for open-field agriculture or for livestock production, and barely sufficient to accommodate more than half the households whose livelihood was to supply the urban market through winter and spring greenhouse vegetable production. Young adults in Hechengli tended to find jobs in the market town and overseas. Our observations of housing quality and income levels confirmed a greater measure of prosperity in Hechengli compared to more remote villages in the same township. Provincial and township leaders presented the village to us as an embodiment of community-centered "green development," (1) as opposed to the corporate model of disenfranchisement, dislocation and compensation. At the initiation of our research in the fall of 2001, the village boasted of owning a chicken factory, fertilizer factory and fish farm, characterized as environmentally friendly business enterprises. Because of the integration of its three enterprises in recycling waste products, Hechengli had gained the designation of a "model ecological village." We observed a strong collective spirit and sense of determination in developing these enterprises among village leaders old enough to have experienced the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). However, by the summer of 2004, the only business still in operation was the fish farm. In 2006 we began to see the effects of globalization in the nearby construction of a large-scale poultry processing factory by an outside investor, and in money made overseas becoming highly visible in the form of individual housing upgrades and other amenities.
The stated benefit of the biomass energy project for the village was to generate a clean-burning fuel from renewable, locally available agricultural residues. This fuel, known as "producer gas," was intended for household use as a substitute for polluting and labor-intensive fuels such as coal and firewood. The project justification also included targeting a cultural minority (Korean) and reducing the burden of household chores for women. This rationale was consistent with the present agenda of international development to respond to the "failures of [macro-level] development policies" and embrace community based projects (Utting 2006: 1-4). However, the intentions of UNDP had macro-level implications: to test an engineering and business model so that it could be commercialized and replicated many times over in rural China. We found the latter motive to dominate implementation strategy, as is consistent with Ferguson's warning (1990: 284) that international and state-sponsored projects tend to serve the dominant interests of society rather than people targeted for the intervention. In this case broader industrial and environmental interests were clearly at stake in testing and broadly expanding biomass energy production.
The project failed to operate according to most of its design expectations, largely due to lack of consideration for the specific local context of the test site. Originally charged with outcomes evaluation to document successes, our assessment team soon turned its attention to a process evaluation to extract "lessons learned." (2) One such lesson was that preoccupation with technical matters tended to cover up more fundamental flaws in project organization and communication. Project shortcomings turned out to be mostly related to social and cultural factors.
Culture is "produced" and "reproduced" in development projects just as it is in other areas of social life. The contracting officer in UNDP who launched the project regarded the project design as generic and transferable. Although we were initially open to the idea of replication, we knew that Chinese norms and practices might conflict with the norms and practices of international development as laid out in the project design. We approached the project ethnographically (Bernard 2006; DeWalt and DeWalt 2002; LeCompte and...
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