The Differential Change Of Rural Daily Mutual Behavior

The change of mutual help behaviors is a mediator of the change of social relations in Chinese rural societies. With the embedment of market economy in the traditional rural society, the study on changes of rural social relations have described a trend towards rationality and materialization, one of the features of which is that help behaviors between people are gradually reduced. However, most of those researches on the change of mutual help did not distinguish the principles of reciprocity between different behaviors, so that their conclusions are generalized, showing a market-oriented evolutionary way of change. In order to accurately describe the overall change of mutual help behaviors, this thesis specifically analyzes their principles of reciprocity, and examines the changes of each under the context of the modernization and marketization in rural areas, and thus offers a rethink of the simplified changing path of mutual help behaviors and the social relations.Based on the field research of a village in northern Zhejiang Province, where the degree of marketization is regarded very high, my thesis investigates the mutual help behaviors in some commonest situations in daily life, categorizing them according to their principles of reciprocity, demonstrates that1) the help behaviors in agriculture production and house building are instrumental, containing self-centered rational calculation. They have been replaced by the labor market brought by the market economy.2) The help behaviors in ritual occasions are customary, constrained by the coercive power of traditional culture. They expand in scale by the stimulation of market economy.3) The help behaviors during illness and shortage of money are expressive, containing intimate emotions between each other. They are continuing in the village life, showing no trends of decreasing.Therefore, under the influence of the market economy, the overall changing trend of mutual help behaviors on a daily basis is complex and differentiated, rather than simply declining, which also proves that the change of social relations in rural China is not all-around rationalized. And this differentiated change could be regarded as the result of interaction between exterior force of market economy and the inner principles of reciprocity.