| During these forty years from 1978 to 2018,there is a bunch of work and practice to summerize and study.A large number of rural surplus laborers spontaneously and continuously have flowed to the large and medium-sized cities and the more developed coastal towns on a large scale.China’s Reform and Opening-up is a relatively independent period of revolutionary development in modern China.It is also a stage when the entire society changes drastically.Historical research on this profound transitional process itself is comparatively weak.In addition to this "migrant tide" the peasant workers are both the result and reason for many social changes in the affected region.Applying an interdisciplinary approach combining history and sociology,this paper focuses on the mechanism of how peasant workers triger social changes in the rural areas of northern Anhui Province,and presents an explanatory understanding on the behaviors and meanings of each key group of participants during the transition.In the context of the "migrant tide" of peasant workers,this paper responds to many critical issues on the social changes in China’s rural areas,and thus provides an attempt to study the history of Reform and Opening-up in northern Anhui Province.The peasants in northern Anhui Province began to make a living outside their hometown ever since the mid-1980s.This consistent large-scale labor inflow has played a positive role in promoting urbanization of these "new land" Meanwhile,the peasant workers also benefitted a lot from the migration,such as increased personal income and living standards,opportunities of learning advanced technology and management pratice,which all fostered a change on individual mindset and therefore led to a gradual but profound change of individual behavior and social development.in northern Anhui.Apart from the above,the labor outflow inevitably caused some other issues including women’s development,pension models,social governance,and education for left-behind children,etc.which should also be highly addressed.Social change is a multi-dimensional and complex dynamic process,which requires a multi-disciplinary research perspective.This paper integrates the "longitudinal and horizontal" approaches to look into the issues behind all the changes,Firstly,from the time dimension,it summarizes the process of "from zero to many" and "from going out to returning home" of the peasant workers,analyzes the impact of critical factors such as policy system,economic characteristics,social management,social livelihoods,traffic conditions on the peasant workers,and summarizes the periodical features of peasant workers and their migration in northern Anhui.Secondly,from the horizontal perspective,this paper applies different methodologies from field survey,key sample interviews,to thematic analysis on rural women,the elderly,and left-behind children,and hence tries to reveal the history through individual and collective narratives.Finally,set in today’s background of rural revitalization,this paper explores the relativity between peasant workers and rural development in northern Anhui and the trend of the evolution of contemporary peasant workers.Labor flow casts a far-reaching influence on the social development,and today’s peasant workers,still as the mainstay of rural construction in northern Anhui,are different from traditional villagers and village officials.The decline of traditional clan authority and the rise of new economic entities are the current development trends of rural society in northern Anhui.Only by creating and maintaining a friendly environment that nurtures the development of the new generation of peasant workers,can we attract the young peasant workers to return home and to participate in rural governance.Only with the joint efforts of an army of elite peasant workers in the rural areas,can we improve the level of local governance and realize the modernization and revitalization of rural areas and share the fruits of development among the people. |
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