Analysis Of The Shringking Machanism Of Small Towns In Agriculture Ditricts - Based On The Logic Of Peasant Families’ Actions

"Urban China" is forming in the substrate of "Rural China". Meanwhile, the loss of factors in agriculture districts and the shrinkage of its small towns are annotations of the times. The paper difines agriculture district as a comprehensive region made up of villeges and towns. It is born out of the geographical space of agriculture. Small towns in the agriculture districts are the spatial carrier of people and the core of the division network. Moreover, as the basic action modules in agriculture, peasant families’logic of actions determines the impetus and the development status of the spatial carriers during the economic and social transition. To analyze the shrinking mechanism of small towns in agriculture districts, the paper focuses on two problems. First, why small towns in agriculture districts are no longer important carriers of peasant famalies. Second, why the function of small towns as the division cores is weakened. The paper builds a livelihood model of peasant family. And it introduces the concepts of property right structure and transaction costs to discuss the reproduction of peasant families. Based on that, the paper analyses the institutional constraints in agriculture districts by generalizing the empirical materials. In addition, the paper attempts to test the theory by parsing the cases of two small towns. Furthermore, the paper will explain the shrinking mechanism of small towns.The paper suggests that the action logic of peasant family roots in the demand of improving living conditions. Under the restriction of institutions caused by "the mechanism of competition among counties" and "the depoliticization in rural area", peasant families have formed "the mechanism of reproduction in the cities based on the internal division of family". And this mechanism causes the shrinkage of small towns in two dimensions. Firstly, peasant families choose cities as their main spatial carrier for some menbers to obtain employment. Secondly, peasan families become dispersed independent individuals in rural area. Because the need of division and trade among peasant families is suppressed, the function of small towns as the division cores is weakened.Based on the analysis of empirical cases, the paper suggests that instead of resource configurations, adjustment of property-rights structure is the critical factors to the development of small towns. In addition, the paper introduces the concept of "capabilities" in welfare economies to analyse the urbanion stategy of China and the property-rights structure of peasant familie. The paper suggests that the shrinkage of small towns is the reflection of the limitation of peasant families’ capabilities.