Governing Communities by Method: The Evolution of Community Work Methods in Shanghai's Neighbourhood Governance

Community work occupies an ambiguous position in urban China: it is at once a social work discipline imported from the West, an administrative technology of the party-state, and a vehicle for resident participation. This article examines how community work methods have evolved in Shanghai, the city widely regarded as the pioneer of Chinese community construction, and theorises the hybrid character of the resulting practice. Drawing on an interpretive analysis of peer-reviewed empirical studies, policy documents, and secondary sources published between 1996 and 2024, the article reconstructs three overlapping phases in the development of Shanghai's community work methods: an administrative-service phase in which community construction turned residents' committees into instruments of social management; a professionalisation phase in which the state sponsored the expansion of social work education, occupational certification, and community-based professional practice; and a digitalisation phase in which grid management, one-network governance, and platform-based co-production re-engineered neighbourhood problem-solving. Across all three phases, a participatory thread of elections, consultation forums, and collective contention coexisted with administrative and professional methods. The article argues that Shanghai's trajectory is best understood as governance-led community work: the state orchestrates all three classic method families identified in Western community organisation theory, sponsoring professionalisation and participation while retaining control over agendas and resource flows. This configuration produces consultative empowerment rather than autonomous civil society, and it suggests that community work theory must attend to the state as an active sponsor of method itself.