Unusual Comparisons: New Area Studies and Caring for the Learning-Disabled in China and England

The article explores the everyday practice of public service delivery by comparing
social care of people with learning disabilities in China and England and what we
can learn from insights from the New Area Studies. We address three research
questions: How is trust-building influenced by the beliefs and practices of local
actors? How are the dilemmas posed by trust building managed by both state and
local actors? What is the role of diplomacy in trust building? In section 2, we
provide a rationale for our unusual comparison of China and England. In section 3,
we summarise our theoretical approach of decentred governance and describe our
ethnographic research method. In section 4, we describe the policy contexts of
learning disabilities in Southampton and S District, Hangzhou. In section 5, we
report our fieldwork on caring for those with learning disabilities. In section 6, we
discuss the difference and similarities between the two policy arenas, especially
using diplomacy to manage network relations. In section 7, we identify six lessons
from the research and we draw the key lessons for practitioners in both countries.
We offer the concluding plausible conjecture that local networks in both countries
are a mix of hierarchy, markets and networks, and local actors in both networks
must find diplomatic ways of managing their encounters with the state.