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Wednesday, February 6: The ecology of traditional village life; rural social organization
First read my book chapter in process on The Chinese Peasant Household as a Complex Human Ecosystem, to give you an idea of the physical and ecological basis of Chinese peasant life. Then turn to the social and cultural basis, and read chapters 4 and 5 from the classic account of village social organization by Fei Xiaotong (Fei Hsiao-t'ung) in his 1947 book, Xiangtu Zhongguo, translated by Gary Hamilton and Wang Zheng as From the Soil.
I will (did) present a further explication of how the buffers of the village household ecological system were eaten up by population growth and production intensification in the Qing.
Friday, February 8: The Political Economy of the Countryside, from Maoism to the Present day
We will deal with three topics today, about 30-40 minutes each:
- The collective economy of Mao's period, seen as an attempt to transform not only the social and political organization, but the "hearts and minds" of the Chinese countryside. First read chapter 1, "Chen Village and its Leaders," from Chen Village, by Anita Chan, Richard Madsen, and Jonathan Unger, about a Guangdong village in the High Socialist period, and get an idea of how the collective agricultural organization was superimposed on the original kinship and neighborhood organization.
- he changes in village political economy with Deng Xiaoping's reforms. I will assign people to read one of the following two articles; after a brief small-group discussion, you will be asked to report to the class on the main points of your article:
1) Another contribution by your very own instructor: Zhou Yingying, Han Hua, and Stevan Harrell (some of those fine folks who brought you Dahua's Wedding), From Labour to Capital, China Quarterly vol. 195, September 2008; this will frame a discussion of "who is being left behind."
2) Shannon May's Bridging Lives and Breaking Homes, which will introduce from the village angle the topic of labor migration, which we will revisit later from the urban angle.
- The ecological crisis of the countryside in the current era of rapid economic development and urbanization, and what the government is trying to do about it. You will be assigned one of the two following articles by Anna Lora-Wainwright, and after a brief small-group discussion, asked to report the significant points to the rest of the class:
1) Lora-Wainwright, et al., Learning to Live with Pollution discusses the ecological crisis.
2) Lora-Wainwight Rural China in ruins discusses the government's attempts to do something about ecological and moral crises."
Wednesday, February 13: Religious revivals
There are other things going on in the countryside besides capitalism, pollution, migration, and "creative destruction" at the hands of the government. One of them is religion, and you ought to look at Adam Chau's The Politics of Legitimation and the Revival of Religion in Modern China, 2005. You should be prepared to compare Chau's material with the material in the film, The Heavenly Court in Song Family Village, by Zhifang Song and Gary Seaman, which will lead us to reflect back on the theme of gender, power, and patriarchy which we discussed in the previous unit.
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