Industrial And Commercial Activities With The Village's Social Evolution,

This paper aims to discuss the structural transformation and its mechanism of Chinese social life at village level since 1978 through the explanation of the rise and fall of two villages.Two typical villages in the northern part of Henan Province were chosen as samples,which were against the macrocontexts of general market-oriented reform and the special development of the leather market,and diachronical comparison of the interactions between the villages' tradition and the commercial activities was carried on.It may will provide a typical case study helping to understand the facts and mechanism of the social transformation in Chinese villages.This paper consists of five parts:Introduction,the village history of industrial and commercial activities(1978-2008), Condition and Interrelation—Different village traditions,Change and Trend—Commercial activities and traditional transformation, Conclusion.The part of Introduction clarified the topic,the study design,the related references and the field work sites of this paper,by which the key concepts and main research perspectives were defined and the main method used in this paper—diachronic comparative study of communities—was introduced.The first part,the village history of industrial and commercial activities,was divided to three chapters.Chapter one and chapter two are the historical accounts about the thriving of industrial activities in Mu Cun and the rise and fall of the commercial activities in Jin Cun.Both of them are connected by the leather economy.Chapter Three analyzes the social consequences to the villages brought by the prosperity and decline of the economic activities which were represented as two different kinds of differentiation and anomie.The second part,Condition and Context-Different village traditions, consists of three chapters in which the village tradition as the condition and context of the commercial development in these two villages is discussed.Through the comparison of two villages,chapter four indicates that the strong village production tradition provided clear direction for the development of fur processing industry in Mu Cun,and the weak production tradition in Jin Cun gave the village more opportunity to develop leather trade.No matter the specic village tradition is strong or not,it promotes the related village toward non-agricultural development since the reform and opening-ups.Chapter five indicates that ascriptive relations mainly consisted of genetic relationships or geopolitical relations provide the social basis for the initialization and growth of the industrial and commercial activities in two villages,however,the strong and close tradition in Mu Cun provided more firm and powerful support than that of Jin Cun.Chapter Six compares the religion traditions of two villages and finds that the deep religious tradition in Mu Cun fostered the credit management in the development of fur processing industry.The third part,changes and trends—commercial activities and traditional transformation,focusing on the impacts of the industrial and commercial activities,is divided into three chapters dicussing the interaction between the two different village traditions and the foregoing impacts.Chapter seven indicates that with the development of the fur processing industry,a new kind of machinery industrial tradition characterized by stability has been established in Mu Cun,while in Jin Cun the development of leather trade demonstrated an old commercial tradition characterized by mobility on scale.The former has stronger power of cohesion and ability of resisting risks than the latter.In chapter eight,firstly,the impacts of the economic crisis and the reactions of the villages are analyzed.The social tradition of Jin Cun was once destroyed nearly all,and that of Mu Cun was impaired heavily and tended to loose. The social organizations have been collapsing.But different from Jin Cun, the social tradition of Mu Cun was protected by the relatively flexiciblity of the industrial production.Secondly,the gradual change in the long-term interation is discussed,that is the economic relationship have been becoming a independent and influential type in the relaitonship system in village,and the role of individual and achieved elments have beening more and more important in the relationship cohesion,expressed in the prominence of the friends relationship in the relationship system.A trend is accompanied by the two kinds of changes,that is,the re-emotionalization of social relationship.Chapter nine analyzes the interaction between the religious tradition and the economic activities in the new periods.The development of economic activities and the religious participation correlates each other closely,and have developed a religious social reputation evaluation system functioned as the mechanism of these interactions.The last part is the conclusion.This paper discusses the findings of this study from two aspects.In the aspect of essence,first,compared with the floating,loosen and thin village tradition,the steady,tight and dense one can give more cohesive support to economic activity and plays a more powerful role on protecting it during the crisis.It explains the differences of flourishing and vanishing between two villages to some degree.Second,no matter from integrated view nor from micro-view, structural transformation has happened in the village social life,the former of which is non-agriculturalized differentiation and anomie,and the latter of which is that emotion plays a more and more important role on holding social relationship together.In the theretical aspect,two concepts of separation and syntrophism are introduced to discuss the status and trend of not only mutual independence but also benefit each other possibly between social relationship and economic relationship. And then this paper carries on a correlative discussion on two conceptions of structure of grade and rationalization and points out:firstly, the concepts of rationalization and interestilization are not appropriate for generalizing Chinese social changes in modernaliztion.Secondly,primary and secondary status of different elements in the ties of structure of grade have changed,the character based on vertical hierarchy have been impaired to some extent,but in the contrast,the structure of grade in horizontal dimension is strengthened as a basic social structure.