Biurring Boundary

Member is the elementary factor of social organizations, the boundary of the membership determines the rights and obligations of member in the organization. In the practice of Farmer Specialized Cooperative, the boundary of the members in the cooperative is not clear and explicit, it has a blurring form with features, including differences in arrangements of rights and obligations of the members, the fuzzy and shiftable of boundary of the membership. The phenomenon of the unsteady boundary of membership affects the property and governance structures of the Farmer Specialized Cooperative, it becomes the strategy of agricultural companies, professional investors, brokers and other rural stronger farmers, which is contrary to the core values of Cooperatives Principal. Therefore, the ordinary farmer members are gradually being marginalized in the governance and financial structure of the Farmer Specialized Cooperative, or even are excluded by the real boundary of the membership.Therefore, this study focused on the members who can really take advantage of cooperatives in the practice of Farmer Specialized Cooperative, and attempted to explain the mechanism why general small-scale producer farmers are difficult to exploit the Farmer Specialized Cooperative.In this study, above all, it gave a theoretical definition of the boundary of cooperative members, and built an analytic framework of main factors of cooperative membership to be established. Next, by the case study methods, it discussed how the boundary of cooperative members established in Li Tun Cooperative.The findings are as follows:Firstly, the phenomenon of the unsteady boundary is in a state of relatively unsteady. The real boundary of members of the Farmer Specialized Cooperative is clear and explicit, including agricultural companies, professional investors, brokers and other stronger farmers in the rural. Otherwise, the rights and obligations of the ordinary planting and breeding members are the fuzzy and shiftable.Secondly, it suggested the unsteady membership originates from different utilization and understandings of different members, unsteadiness of China’s traditional rural social relationship, unsuitableness of the relative institutional rules.Thirdly, according to the classical cooperative theories, cooperative is a organization for farmers to promote their weak market competition position. It means their social and natural resources have a rough similarity. Differently, the cooperatives’member constituent in China has a distinctive and characteristic heterogeneity. When the market and policy have changed, for instance, the land resources could be exchanged by the capital, it made the resources of the small scaled farmer member hardly have the mutual benefit with the large scaled farmer member, some member quit, the constituent of the members have changed. Therefore, it focused the the evolution logic of the flamer specialized cooperatives’member constituent, and it tried to analytic the changes of the connection mechanism between different members.Fourthly, on the bases of the summary of the consequences of the unsteady membership in the cooperatives, it refects behind the unsteady form of boundary of cooperative members, there is a power structure make cooperative become the strategy of the stronger members in the cooperatives. Fifthly, it suggests there is a layer structure of cooperatives, including agricultural companies and the village committee members as the strong members who control the cooperative, the large scale agricultural producers and the family farms are the middle class, and the small agricultural producers are in the periphery of the boundary of membership, which is in accordance with china’s rural society interests pattern.Sixthly, it has a reflection on the function and the principal of the cooperative institutions.