288 Communities and Social Capital
leader’, or ‘innovative core’, is thus an important element to drive such collabora-
tive action. Under the household responsibility system in rural China, cooperative
consciousness as a core of social capital is particularly important, and provided a
sound basis for Taoliwa’s people to break through the constraints of narrow indi-
vidual interests, and to form and maintain a new development dynamic instead.
Without returning to the abandoned and formal ‘collective system’, Taoliwa has
developed a new form of collective action. Finally, all these elements were inte-
grated into an ‘innovation network’ comprising village residents, farmers in nearby
villages and urban relatives, leading to an enhancement of village innovation capac-
ity, with a spreading impact on nearby villages.
There are also important generalizable lessons from this specific case of social
connectedness in Taoliwa. First, development in the village did not stop after Mr
Liu died, which indicates that a more distributed network is driving sustainable
development rather than just one person. Second, Taoliwa’s experience was not
limited within the village but had spread to a number of neighbouring villages.
Reflecting the popularity of Taoliwa’s experience, the head of Taoliwa was recom-
mended and elected by the residents as director of the administrative village com-
mission. Finally, Taoliwa’s experience seems to suggests that as part of traditional
culture, the natural links between urban residents and their rural relatives offer
another route for rural economic development and technological innovation.
Enhancing Social Connectedness
Compared with other regions, social capital is more important to the marginal
areas of China where unfavourable geographic and resource environments con-
strain the inflows of external capital and knowledge. The importance of social con-
nectedness for the sustainable rural livelihoods in the marginal areas of China has
been illustrated through the phenomenon of farmer innovation circles (FIC). Organ-
izational patterns at various levels from household communication networks,
inter-household technology learning groups and inter-village innovative links have
a positive effect on agricultural and natural resource innovation, which in turn
improves rural incomes.
However, it would be romantic to say that enhancing social connectedness by
itself necessarily leads to sustainable rural livelihoods as social capital is merely one
of many elements affecting local livelihoods. Nor is it true that the FIC alone can
meet the needs of farmers entirely without external capital and assistance. Whilst
the benefits of external intervention should not be underestimated, top-down
development might be neither successful nor sustainable unless the innovative
potential and intrinsic dynamics among the poor are fully recognized and devel-
oped. If there is to be sustainable development in the marginal areas of China, then
there will clearly need to be closer communication and interaction between agri-
cultural professionals and rural communities.