Eight Households' Eighty Years: The Process And The Power Of Peasant Households' Socialization

If you want to understand China, you should understand Chinese peasant firstly; and if you want to understand the peasant, you must be aware of the peasant's change. Based on a research on the eight peasant households in Mao Zedong's "xingguo survey", this paper describes the process of social change of Chinese peasant since the twentieth century in order to explore the driving force and the path of Chinese peasant' s change.The article points out that Chinese peasant have experienced at least three large-scale external shocks since the twentieth century which are driven by the military revolution, the state power and the market economy. Based on a case study of the eight peasant households, the paper finds that there caused a same result to the three peasant Patterns: the scope of production, living and social interaction has broken through the family areas, and the frequency of social mobility continue to increase. In other words, the three large-scale external shocks have increased peasant households' socialized degree.From the perspective of socialization, this article further discusses the path of Chinese peasant's social change.It is found that the changes in the course of Chinese peasant can be interpreted as a wave-like process since the twentieth century. The paper also carries out a preliminary conclusion that the rural social change can be defined as two type of model, one is called integrated social change, and the other is called endogenous social change...