Organizing Rural China — Rural China Organizing

by Bislev, Ane; Thogersen, Stig; Unger, Jonathan; Rolandsen , Unn Målfrid H.; Göbel, Christian; Hua, Ma; Yong, Xu; Yiqiang, Liu; Hansen, Mette Halskov; Bunkenborg , Mikkel; Svensson, Marina; Cuiming, Pang; Minghong, Yang; Delman, Jørgen; Shue, Vivienne

• ISBN13: 9780739170090
• ISBN10: 0739170090
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-04-05
• Publisher: Lexington Books

Summary

During the early 1980s China embarked on what can be seen as one of the world's largest social experiments ever. Decollectivization meant much more than the reorganization of agricultural production into family based farming. It signalled significant changes to rural social relations, when privatization, marketization and increased geographical mobility started tearing apart the economic and social institutions that had structured collective village life under Mao. The focus of this book is on how rural society has been reorganized in the 21st century. The first chapters outline the basic organizational structure of rural China and can be used as an introduction to the topic in a classroom setting. They show how the state and its social scientists draw up plans to overcome the perceived lack of rural social organization, and discuss the often problem-ridden implementation of their ideas. The second section presents case studies of institutions that organize key aspects of rural life: Boarding schools where rural children learn to accept organizational hierarchies; lineage organizations carving out new roles for themselves; dragonhead enterprises expected to organize agricultural production and support rural development, and several others. The book is of theoretical interest because of its focus on the re-embedding, or reintegration, of individuals into new types of collectivities, which are less predetermined by tradition and habit and more a matter of, at least perceived, individual choice. Most chapters are based on extensive fieldwork and contain vivid examples from daily life, which will make the book attractive to anyone who wants to understand how Chinese villagers experience the extraordinary social changes they are going through.

Author Biography

Ane Bislev is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Culture and Society at Aarhus University. She is the author of the Need for Capital Social Capital and Microcredit in Southwest China (2010). Stig Thgersen is professor of China studies at Aarhus University and author of A County of Culture: Twentieth Century China Seen from the Village Schools of Zouping, Shandong (2002) and editor of Doing Fieldwork in China (2006).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction: Organizing Rural China-Rural China Organizing	p. 1
Political Framework, Discourses, and Experiments
Continuity and Change in Rural China's Organization	p. 15
Organizing Rural China: Political and Academic Discourses	p. 35
Government Propaganda and the Organization of Rural China	p. 51
Stitching It All Back Up: The Role of Sent-down Cadres in Rural Community Building	p. 69
Reorganizing Rural China from the Bottom: A Discussion of Recent Experiments with Rural Reconstruction	p. 85
Governing China's Failed Villages: Between a "Weak State" and a Fragmented Society	p. 103
Local Actors and Practices
Learning to Organize and to be Organized: Student Cadres in a Chinese Rural Boarding School	p. 125
Organizing Rural Health Care	p. 141
Lineages and the State: Re-inventing Lineages and Ancestor Ceremonies as Cultural Heritage	p. 157
Native Place in Cyberspace: The Civic Engagement of a Cyber Community	p. 173
Embedded Microcredit-Creating Village Cohesion on the Basis of Existing Social Networks	p. 189
A Value Chain Gone Awry: Implications of the "Tainted Milk Scandal" in 2008 for Political and Social Organization in Rural China	p. 205
Modern/Rural China: State Institutions and Village Values	p. 223
Index	p. 233
About the Authors	p. 237
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