Identity And The Logic Of Collective Struggle

China's market transition is not only an economic, social and ideological transition, but also accompanied by re-distribution of interests and re-differentiation among all sectors and groups in society with various identities, as well as the process of re-positioning, identifying and constructing of self identity and social status. Conflicts of interests and social structural imbalance resulted from such a reorganization of status and identity has caused the collective struggle of various interest groups in Chinese society. In this social and historical context, demobilized cadres in enterprises collectively struggle for their identities and to maintain their previous treatment as cadres. Identity is hidden in China's all types of collective struggle as a "hidden text". And although previous studies have also covered the topic, but few researchers deal with logical relationship among mobilization, network and strategy of collective protest from the perspective of identity. Through the case study of demobilized cadres'collective protest in county K, this paper tries to explain the effect of identity on the construction of the logic in collective struggle.The status identity of corporate demobilized cadres is a historical process. State-owned enterprise reform caused the deprivation of demobilized cadres'identity. They became losers in market reforms from the political elite, along with the loss of all benefits in their daily lives as cadres. So they have a stronger "sense of deprivation" and realize the importance of the identity of cadres to income and redistribution. When there is no cadre status, there is no power of discourse and the corresponding social status and treatment. They are eager to seek national recognition again. In this process, status identity of corporate demobilized cadres is constructed step by step and the major demands of their collective protest are to restore the identity of cadres and then restore all the benefits enjoyed by this identity.The unique status and its identity of corporate demobilized cadres made them more adept at carrying out their protest by political discourse, such as "rights", "representative", "public servants" etc. to compete for the leadership of discourse in the protest, and thus to demonstrate the legitimacy of their collective struggle. In protest mobilization, they use collective memories and life experiences; in protest network, their status identity of "demobilized cadres" deepens and strengthens their daily contact, and this close contact as a network in turn strengthens their identity for their own, which is more conducive to protest mobilization; in protest strategy, in addition to strategies commonly used by other groups like "routine resistance", "protest of law" and "protest by law ", " gain rights by reason", "according to potential resistance "and so on, the construction of cadres'status identity makes them more adept at building the local knowledge on the logic in their collective struggle. They take the initiative to request through the" accompany visits ", and even make cadre status as a strong weapon to counter the underlying political power. Therefore, the logical construction of their collective struggle has also experienced the transition from "protest for fame" out of "survival ethics" to "protest by fame" out of "political ethics" or "ethical right", which is used to fight against local and central authority for maximum group benefits.