Lexington Books Organizing Rural China - Rural China Organizing (Challenges Facing Chinese Political Development)

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. Review The modernization of China's vast and hugely important countryside has been a major concern for generations of the country's political leaders and intellectuals and the issue has received renewed emphasis during the decade of the Hu-Wen administration. Organizing Rural China is a timely collection of fascinating studies which offer unique insights into the processes shaping the modernization of rural China. The Chinese and Western authors assembled here examine a broad range of actors involved from the political, social and economic realms and analyze state propaganda as well as relevant intellectual discourses. This comprehensive volume should be read by anyone interested in rural China's development.--Björn Alpermann, assistant professor of contemporary Chinese studies, University of Würzburg The essays weave a fascinating landscape of contemporary rural society in China dominated no longer by homogenizing and centralizing policies but by an astonishing diversity of practices and temporalities. Long submerged temple communities, lineage structures, socialist ownership principles and cooperatives, urban initiatives, powerful agro-businesses and digital networks jostle and compete to offer new kinds of community and livelihood for the long-enduring peoples of this good earth.--Prasenjit Duara, Raffles Professor of Humanities, National University of Singapore, and director of Asia Research Institute This work is an in-depth and timely analysis of the development of organizations in rural China written by a wide range of well-established international experts. The book is a valuable textbook for students in development and Asian studies, and will be of great interest for scholars and professionals working on rural China.--Peter Ho, University of Leiden About the Author Stig Thøgersen is professor of China studies at Aarhus University. He is the author of A County of Culture – Twentieth century China seen from the village schools of Zouping, Shandong (University of Michigan Press, 2002) and Doing Fieldwork in China (ed. with Maria Heimer, NIAS Press 2006). He has published several articles on social, political and cultural change in rural China in journals