Browse results
Abstract
The “origin” narrative of left-wing rural literature, especially the “revolution” narrative, has by and large not received sufficient historical reflection and specific intertextual discussion. In the early left-wing rural novels composed from 1928 to 1932, what changes did the “revolution” bring about in rural society? How was the configuration of power reformulated? How did the revolutionaries image the ideal post-revolution society? The historical discussion of this complex process in the early left-wing rural novels is closely related to the historical facts of the rural areas, the subjective experiences of the peasants themselves, and the review of the writer’s narrative style. Revisiting this historical topic, we can see that the structural relationships contained in literary trends, such as the entanglement between literature and history, ideals and practices, truth and fiction, etc., last far longer than writers’ and readers’ imaginations. It may be the key to making the retelling of the rural “revolution” in the new century profound and far-reaching.
Abstract
It was once believed that land rights in the Huaibei region were highly concentrated and that large ownership of land was extremely common. However, in recent years, more and more scholars have come to believe that there was no such tendency of serious land concentration in modern China. Republican-era statistics on land ownership in Huaibei are extremely rare. In contrast, the “Land and Real Estate Ownership Certificate Stubs”
Abstract
In response to the academic debate about the “individualization” of the patterns of love and marriage in contemporary China, this article takes the spousal selection and marriage and love practices of peasants in northern Zhejiang since China’s reform and opening up as the basis of field study, and explores the roles and functions of love and gender relations and their relationship to ethical factors in the overall process of “spousal selection→marriage→family→giving birth.” We also find that although the “love” factor has become more and more important in the marriage practice of recent generations (especially among rural women) and has even become an indispensable key to starting marital family life, it has not fully established its own independent space and value. It has in fact been boosted, guided, and controlled by, and incorporated into, the traditional marriage and family pattern. This traditional pattern, with its own unique resilience, has integrated love into the family life cycle, gradually pulling it into the orbit of traditional marriage and family, and successfully carrying on the “sacred undertaking” of the ancestors. This overall characteristic is more pronounced in developed eastern coastal villages (among young women) than in less developed central and western rural areas (among young women). In terms of theory and methodology, the “individualization” of love and marriage among contemporary Chinese peasants needs to be put back into the framework of “familism” for in-depth reflection, rather than simply being understood from the standpoint of “individualization” and from the binary opposition between “individualism” and “familism.”
Abstract
The theory of “state involution,” first proposed by Prasenjit Duara, has been used to explain the expansion of power of the modern Chinese state. However, some scholars argue, on the basis of regional studies, that the concept of state involution was at most only applicable to North China and did not pertain to the practice of the Guomindang regime, which had built a complete administrative system down to the grassroots level. In 1946, Zhejiang province decided to reduce the number of townships to cut fiscal expenditures. With Huangyan county as a regional case, we investigate the implementation of the policy of reducing the number of townships and find that the theory of state involution is still applicable to explaining grassroots politics in Zhejiang under the Guomindang, showing that the theory has a wider range of applicability than some scholars believe. The development of state involution in this period is closely related to the governance capacity and patterns of the Guomindang regime at the grassroots level. It is thus inappropriate to see just the establishment and expansion of a grassroots administrative system as a sign that state involution had been overcome.
Abstract
Max Weber came to see his “rational bureaucracy” as also something of an “iron cage.” The reliance on regularized paperwork can result in a separation of the administrative procedure from actual substance, and the level-by-level transmission of documents can result in the resolution of problems on paper only. The complex specialized and standardized procedures of the formal, hierarchical bureaucracy are therefore often ineffective because they have lost touch with reality. In China, the problem of the “involution” of public power found by central inspection teams
Abstract
The development of the Chinese revolutionary movement in the early twentieth century absorbed cultural resources from traditional secret societies and associations. The White Lotus, the Tiandihui, the Gelaohui, the Triad, and the various secret societies that had emerged in the Taiping and the Boxer rebellions were all incorporated into the discourse system of revolutionary history. The secret societies’ slogans of “overthrow the Qing and restore the Ming” and “rob the rich to help the poor” merged with the revolutionaries’ platform of “drive out the Manchus” and “relief for people’s livelihood,” and finally advanced the success of the Xinhai Revolution and was turned into a coherent historical narrative. After the founding of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen and Song Jiaoren carefully assessed the function of secret societies and distinguished them from modern political parties. On the other hand, leaders of the Communist Party, such as Mao Zedong, Qu Qiubai, Yun Daiying, and Chen Duxiu, emphasized the ideological transformation of secret societies and the suitable role they could play in the revolution, thus showing a dynamic strategy of allying with these organizations. The history of the relationship between the Chinese revolution and secret societies reflects the changing characteristics and logic of the underclass of Chinese society.
Abstract
Grassroot communities are critical fields of governance. To enhance the development of local government and to mobilize, organize, and arm the people to fight against the Japanese invaders, the Communist Party employed a number of methods in the base areas during the Anti-Japanese war. Among them, holding meetings was an effective method to get the work done and to forge leadership in local governance in the base areas, and it built a space of power that incorporated and displayed both group and individual experiences. Though the endless rounds of meetings can be seen as a kind of formalism, they provide a pivotal angle to observe the operation of power in the Northwest Shanxi Anti-Japanese Base Area. For the Communist Party, whose purpose was to reshape the countryside, the implementation of policies was far more important than their formulation. The villages were the critical places where the Party interacted with the people, where most of the meetings occurred, and where most of the policy directives were implemented. Grassroot meetings in the base areas revealed directly the willingness of the people to participate as well as their on-site performance, and indirectly the response of the people toward the Party’s policies and how the Party dealt with that response. Making decisions, mobilizing and organizing the people, and implementing policies were the basic functions of meetings. The establishment of the institution of meetings and the twists and turns of its practice reflected the gaps between the Party’s ideal and practice, and between the Party and the people.
Abstract
From the end of the 1950s to the early 1960s, the Party Central made positive adjustments to the people’s commune system. Each tier of the system was downsized. Existing scholarship has mainly provided macro-narratives or policy analyses of this episode of history from the perspective of political history or institutional history. Using archives on “dividing up brigades and teams” of the communes in Pucheng county in Shaanxi province, this article contends that, during the collectivization period, the state neglected the pre-existing environmental, social, economic, and cultural characteristics of villages, as well as the relationships among the villages, in the process of integrating them into larger units of collective production with a higher degree of public ownership, thus engendering new conflicts and ruptures in local society. During the process of “dividing up brigades and teams,” individuals and collectives used their legitimate rights of division to maximize their own interests, during which multiple forces were at play. To some extent, this led to a return to long-standing village traditions. These findings are crucial for us to understand the history of the adjustments in the people’s commune system and to reflect on the institution of agricultural collectives in the pre-Reform era.
Abstract
During the collectivization period, the price of the bull was higher than the price of the cow on the fixed asset registration form in Lingqian Village, Linyi City, Shandong Province. The workpoints of male labor were also higher than those for female labor. Therefore, there was a gender difference that applied to both cattle and humans, but the former was not simply the social projection and cultural metaphor of the latter; rather they shared the same natural difference in terms of economic value in that given system. Namely, the values of humans and cattle depended entirely on their contribution to agricultural labor, not on gender discrimination. The reason for this phenomenon is that the ecological environment and living conditions shaped people’s psychology, which then determined the internal classification structure of gender in humans as well as animals. The classification attitude of the values of humans and animals was thus a result of adaptation to the natural environment and living conditions, and, as such, was a collective survival strategy, but it was also the product of a particular economic system. This phenomenon resulted from the fact that the privately owned land of individual families had been collectivized, revealing some characteristics of the cattle-raising mode under the collective economic system. The case of Lingqian Village in Shandong Province contributes to world anthropology by illustrating one particular system of social livelihood, with cattle as the reference point.
Abstract
The practice of power of the village governance body is an important perspective from which to understand the form of local governance as well as a crucial aspect of the capacity of local governance. In local government building, the village governance body has the special feature of supportive agency – that is, the secretary of the village Party committee has only incomplete governance power, but he/she does have the power to allocate resources in the village. Different from the personalization of power in an oligarchy, the power of a supportive agent is something that local rural elites rely on to gain resources. They then use those resources as a hook to draw in other participants and use public rules to embed themselves into the governance of village affairs, thereby forming the power structure of the grassroots community. The network of power and interests in the interaction between township and village and the pattern of profit-sharing in the village constitute the basis for this practice of power under supportive agency. The supportive relationship between local government and village cadres has led to a separation between the cadres and the peasants, a rupture of the state-peasant relationship, increasing social differentiation, and weakened village autonomy. The practice of supportive agency reflects changes in the logic of local governance – local autonomy has been turned into local governance statization. Thus, in these circumstances, in order to achieve a successful transition to modernized local governance, the linkage between the state and the peasants should be rebuilt, and the local organization of governance should be reshaped.