Research On The Farmers’ Collective Action From The Perspective Of Reciprocity Relation

From December 28 to 29,2020,Xi Jinping stressed in the Central Rural Work Conference that at the historic juncture of the second One Hundred Goal,consolidating and expanding the achievements in overcoming poverty,promoting rural revitalization,as well as speeding up the agriculture modernization is the major issue related to the overall situation that our party attaches great importance to.The issue of "agriculture,rural areas and farmers" must be taken as the top priority of the whole Party’s work which requires the power of the whole party and the whole society to promote rural revitalization.Organizational revitalization is an important content of rural revitalization and an organizational guarantee for the smooth implementation of rural revitalization strategy.At present,China’s rural society is undergoing great changes unseen in a century.The organizational structure of rural society based on the traditional,relatively stable blood relationship and geographical relationship is gradually disintegrating.The way of life and values of peasants are undergoing fundamental changes.The reality of "urban-rural amphibious" and "family separation" also brings about the atomization of rural society and the enhancement of individual consciousness.The collective action ability of farmers is gradually declining,which results in the collective action dilemma of farmers’lack of consciousness and only participating in no action in rural revitalization,increasing the cost of national governance and accelerating the disintegration of rural community.Therefore,in the new period,farmers must be re-mobilized and organized,so that the collective action of farmers can be effectively run,which will help realize the implementation of rural revitalization strategy better.The theory of collective action has experienced the development of three schools.The first is the school of rational choice.As represented by Olsen,the dilemma of collective action is caused by the free riding of rational people,which can only be overcome by providing selective incentives and public identity.The second is the ideological schools,represented by North and so on,who believe that to solve the free-rider problem,we must construct an ideological theory,among which moral factors are especially important.The third is the school of social capital,represented by Robert Putnam and Ostrom.They believe that when members face the dilemma of collective action,it is not enough to have only ideology and custom,but also the effective operation of the rule system or system as social capital.None of the existing theories on collective action can fully explain the occurrence,operation and goal pursuit of farmers’ collective action in the traditional period of China.On the one hand,it ignores the comprehensiveness of the goal orientation of peasant collective action,including not only the realization of the common goal,but also the continuous pursuit of collective action.the farmers’ collective action is separated from the state and falls into the "state-society"dualistic opposition.In addition,the cultivation of social capital is regarded as a tool to overcome the dilemma of collective action,but it is too general.There is a lack of classified research on each element of social capital,let alone the research on the influence of social capital on collective action.For this reason,on the basis of existing research,this paper brings the "country" back to the study of farmers’ collective action,taking the cooperation between farmers and the state as the ultimate goal of collective action,and selects the reciprocal relationship in social capital as the research perspective to discusses the influence of different reciprocal relations on the collective action of farmers in the traditional Chinese rural society by the cases of "Deep China Survey".The reciprocal relationship of Chinese rural society can be analyzed from three dimensions:reciprocity intensity,reciprocity scale and reciprocity rule,because of which three modes of reciprocity are formed:exclusive reciprocity,integrated reciprocity and adaptive reciprocity.In the framework of this analysis,how the reciprocity of different models affects the collective action of different types of farmers is discussed.Exclusive reciprocity is a reciprocity mode spontaneously formed by farmers based on consanguinity and intimate relationship,which has the characteristics of uniform reciprocity intensity,exclusive selection of reciprocity scale and complete exclusive reciprocity rules,thus forming a family subsistence collective action.In the exclusive reciprocity,farmers can achieve the goal of subsistence collective action by means of mutual supervision among members,fair distribution,belief embedding and debugging of exclusive reciprocity,which not only guarantees the survival safety,but also ensures the continuous generation of collective action under the continuation of the reciprocal relationship.The collective action of farmers’ survival under the condition of exclusive reciprocity is the embodiment of farmers’ family nature and the guarantee mechanism of farmers’ survival safety.However,it also brings about negative externality--relationship entendlement.In order to maintain the stability of reciprocal relationship and the sustained benefits of collective action,farmers will refuse other farmers to enter their reciprocal relationship,which makes collective action more conservative and exclusive.From the perspective of rural integration,exclusive reciprocity causes the internal division of rural areas into "mutually beneficial alliances" with multiple "fragmented" feature,and generates competitions of resources,or even malicious struggles,leading to the chaos of the internal order of rural areas.At this time,rural authorities need to intervene to integrate the"fragmented" reciprocal relationship and guide farmers to change their family nature to social publicity.Integrated reciprocity is a reciprocity model formed after the integration of the "fragmented"reciprocity relationship between rural authorities and farmers.It has the characteristics of uniform reciprocity intensity,elastic integration of reciprocity scale,internal and external integration of reciprocity rules,thus forming the collective action of rural development.In integrated reciprocity,rural authority can realize the goal of rural development collective action by means of public action feedback,informal system restraint,seeking help from the state and debugging integrated reciprocity,which not only enhances the prestige of village authority,develops rural community,but also maintains the development of reciprocal relationship with farmers.The collective action of rural development that farmers participate in under the integrated reciprocity is the embodiment of farmers’sociality and the development mechanism of rural community.However,it also brings about negative externality--relational control.When the authoritative figures integrate the reciprocal relationship,they have the power to distribute the reciprocal relationship.Farmers have to be closely attached to the authority,and thus gradually lose the autonomy of collective action.For the countryside,it is easy to fall into villages ruled by oligarchs,clans,gangs and so on.In the long run,it will not only infringe the interests of farmers,but also bring challenges to the state rule.At this time,it is necessary for the state to "enter" to eliminate the relational control of rural authority and guide farmers to national identity.Adaptive reciprocity is the reciprocity mode formed by the state and farmers,which has the characteristics of reciprocity intensity fairness,reciprocity scale hierarchy adaptation reciprocity rule embedding adaptation and so on,thus forming the collective action recognized by the state.In adaptive reciprocity,countries by way of level competition and empowerment to decompose large-scale reciprocity,the formal rules embedded flexible to adapt to the rural informal rules,while using the weak reciprocity of arbitrary power and strong reciprocity of basic power to form a "high wall of the state" to promote the "self-nationalization" of farmers.It promotes two-way adaptability of both countries and farmers,strengthens farmers’ recognition of the country,continues their mutual expectations of the country,and ensures the stability of national rule.Under the adaptive reciprocity,farmers’ participation in the collective action recognized by the state is the embodiment of farmers’nationhood and the cultivation mechanism of national identity.However,it also brings about negative externalities--sluggish relationship.The state begins to face farmers’ reciprocity demands.However,due to the lack of national governance capacity in the traditional period coupled with social ambiguity,the state can not adjust the reciprocity relationship in time andto respond to farmers’ reciprocity demands effectively,leading to the emergence of farmers’ selective identification.In the guise of"self-nationalization",farmers only hope that the state can abide by the contract of reciprocity and protect the survival of their families.If the state always ignores the needs of farmers and presses them harder,the farmers will take off the cloak of "self-nationalization" and use the "weapon of the weak"to fight against the state and find new mutually beneficial relationships.In order to resolve the crisis of national identity caused by the delay of relations,this paper discusses how to reorganize farmers from the perspective of the state,and tries to put forward "mutual governance ",which means that the state takes the initiative to establish a friendly network of mutually beneficial relations with all subjects of society,and to govern complex relationships of mutual benefit,so as to realize the reasonable distribution of the social interests and fully arouse the enthusiasm of the society,which then participates in collective actions initiated or independently carried out by the state to form a positive state and positive society.In order to make "mutual governance" effectively promote the operation of farmers’ collective action,nine principles are put forward,they are the maintaining of gradual initial reciprocity and sustainability of reciprocity,the attention to fairness of mutual benefit,establishment of effective distribution network at the level of reciprocity,exploration of minimum reciprocity unit,non-politicized organization based on cooperation,long-term coexistence of autonomy of informal rules and embedding of formal rule,negotiation and flexible adaptation of reciprocal rules.