Research On Urban Political Culture Changes In The Process Of Urbanization

Since Chinese reform and opening-up, the trend of urban modernization led by urbanization also brings community and sense of belonging, lack of the social security, reduction in risk tolerance, collapse of the world of traditional thoughts and readjustment of the boundary between power and rights at the time of providing villagers freedom and liberation of autonomy. Therefore, the process of urbanization not only brings transitions in economy, politic and society and other aspects, but certainly causes political and cultural changes in Chinese villages. However, there haven’t not clear results and enough attentions in the future direction of change in culture and politic of villages, especially in the empirical studies under the background of urbanization.In the process of urbanization, Chinese villages appear three various forms, traditional form, transfer form and community form, all of which are with a transformation process from traditional form to transfer form and then into community form finally. The object for research in this paper is the three incorporated villages in various stages of urbanization, respectively Poshiqiao village located in Banzhuang town of Lian Yungang city of traditional form, Xiaoma village located in Banjing town of Nantong city of transfer form and Xinzha village, new-type town community of Liuhe town, Taicang city of transfer form. This paper deconstructs the village politic and culture of those three into four sub-variables: political socialization, political cognition, political emotions and political value with method of synchronic cross-section comparison, then establishes mode of politic and culture of various villages based on function of village political and cultural changes, describing changes in details in village politic and culture in the process of urbanization, and further explores the future developing trend of village politic and culture in the process of urbanization by comparing the mode of village politic and culture of the three villages. A key finding of this paper is external representations of the process of urbanization, especially the urbanization: for example, demolition, land expropriation and other land conversion form touch the villagers’ nerve and urbanization redefines villagers’ identity and roles, bringing out adjustment in power structure, redistribution of resource, and even changes in social class structure and breaking the solid relationship between social cultural value systems and social socio-economic and political structure. In addition, breaking of this relationship means acculturation of village homogenous politic and culture and culture renewal with concrete reflection of changes in villagers’ political knowledge, emotion and values of the current political structure, for example, the identity in political legitimacy is strengthened, participation is improved and political knowledge is expanded, etc. With transition in cultural space the traditional politic and culture live on from rural society to modern town, changes develop in village politic and culture. From the vertical perspective, village politic and culture change from subjective politic and culture to participatory political culture; from lateral perspective, village politic and culture are divided into ‘left-behind’ political subculture, ‘marginal’ political subculture and ‘rural elite’ political subculture. This study also proves that variable of politic and culture and the socialization process maintaining them are of significant importance to explanation of political structure and process, pushing forward urbanization and various reforms in the transition period. It is necessary for taking advantage of the new a situation to master the change laws of village politic and culture.