National Collectivism And Local Folk Traditions

In the 1960s and 1970s,when the Taihe Reservoir conservancy project was organized and implemented in the Zidong area of central Shandong Province,local peasants working for the collective("Chufu" in Chinese)were involved in the project,showing their enthusiasm for labor and flexible coping strategies.Up to now,some rich and diverse narrative discourse has been spread,illustrating the profound influence of this event on the local society.Throughout the implementation process of the local water conservancy project,it is not hard to find that the executive branch carried out a relatively flexible mobilization strategy and fully respected the rural social traditions,combining national interests and local interests.With the help of the state’s political mobilization during this period,the historical memory of suffering was used to stimulate the local people’s collectivist spirit and increase their motivation to participate.During the implementation of the project,the local government stimulated the enthusiasm of laborers by means of political discourse propaganda,setting up models and carrying out labor competitions.The local executive branch’s efforts to organize and manage the construction work,based on the original communal and village units,helped to stimulate collective consciousness in rural society;by respecting the traditions of rural society and allowing room for individual flexibility,the flexible operation of local elites facilitated positive interaction between the state and local society.The organization and implementation of this project has formed a rich and diverse individual memory and collective memory in the local society.In the personal narratives of different characters,the engineering construction experience endows individuals with different life meanings.Some people have changed their fortunes by seizing opportunities,and today’s narratives show a self-conscious closeness to the national discourse;more people return to their original villages with the life experience,which becomes an emotional bond and a topic of common communication later on,thus showing the heterogeneity of the influence of national system on local society.Local people moved from villages into construction sites,participating as members of the community in local public affairs and receiving ideological shaping from the state.After the project,the workers returned to their villages and shared this life experience.Their discourse showed differences of perspective from those in their native villages,bringing vitality to rural society and having an important impact on the maintenance of local social order and cultural creation.For a long time,through the mutual practice of improving living space and resisting external crises,the villagers of the Zidong area have formed the collectivist tradition in rural society.The successful implementation of the Taihe Reservoir project during the collectivization period in the 1960s and 1970s reflects the activation and reconstruction of this local tradition in the modern state system.Moreover,the various systems of the state in the collectivization period did not come from nowhere but were closely related to the nature of Chinese rural society and its governance tradition.The traditional concept of "public work is the most important thing" in Chinese rural society has roughly formed an organic connection between the two different social identities of villagers and laborers on construction sites.Up to now,the collective concept and folk tradition with local flavor and Chinese characteristics are still prevalent in relevant narratives.It is the collectivist spirit prevailing in rural society that was involved in the construction of the cultural unity of Chinese civilization and the process of national unification.This study mainly uses the methods of fieldwork and documentary analysis to investigate the concrete manifestations of collectivist tradition in the process of state mobilization in local societies during the period of collectivization.The main innovation of the thesis is that by selecting the practice of rural people’s life from the perspective of state administrative mobilization,it investigates how the traditions of local collectivism have been able to communicate and reconcile between the unified state politics and scattered life of small villagers and integrate them into the spirit of state collectivism,thereby understanding the developmental continuity and inner structure of Chinese social civilization.It is clear that the rural people,as the main body of production,are placed in the rural society as members of the community in the modern state system,and their bodily experience in production practices has a profound influence on the construction of the meaning of their individual lives.Through this specific case of local water conservancy construction,it is of great academic significance and social value to examine the prominent manifestations of collectivist traditions in rural societies during the collectivization period and to observe how rural people,under the conditions of being given a unified political identity by the state,showed special family feelings and behaviour patterns in this particular life experience alternating between the village and the construction site.From the perspective of folklore,investigating the memories and feelings of local people as subjects of the practice during the collectivization period can provide a reference for other related studies of this period in other disciplines.The collectivization system in the middle of the 20th century did not come out of thin air;it was implemented in different parts of the country in different ways and was closely related to the grassroots governance and cultural traditions in traditional rural society.Certainly,the Taihe Reservoir project in the 1960s and 1970s was characterized by a combination of national and local interests,and its implementation was based on and premised on the people’s commune system of the time.Such a spatial and temporal limitation does not necessarily bind the academic significance of this case,but rather provides us with a huge space for further dense and profound academic thinking in understanding the complex interaction among national politics,local social development and the daily lives of the public.