Organizing Rural China — Rural China Organizing

Ane Bislev, Stig Thogersen

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9780739170106
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: History

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 signaled 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.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: Organizing Rural China—Rural China Organizing
• Part One: Political Framework, Discourses, and Experiments
• 3 Organizing Rural China: Political and Academic Discourses
• 4 Government Propaganda and the Organization of Rural China
• 5 Stitching It All Back Up: The Role of Sent-down Cadres in Rural Community Building
• 6 Reorganizing Rural China from the Bottom: A Discussion of Recent Experiments with Rural Reconstruction
• 7 Governing China’s Failed Villages: Between a “Weak State” and a Fragmented Society
• Part Two: Local Actors and Practices
• 9 Organizing Rural Health Care
• 10 Lineages and the State: Re-inventing Lineages and Ancestor Ceremonies as Cultural Heritage
• 11 Native Place in Cyberspace: The Civic Engagement of a Cyber Community
• 12 Embedded Microcredit—Creating Village Cohesion on the Basis of Existing Social Networks
• 13 A Value Chain Gone Awry: Implications of the “Tainted Milk Scandal” in 2008 for Political and Social Organization in Rural China
• 14 Modern/Rural China: State Institutions and Village Values
• Index
• About the Authors