Village and Family in Contemporary China

Village and Family in Contemporary China PDF Author: William L. Parish
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226645919
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440

Get Book Here

Book Description
After 1949 the Chinese Communists carried out land reform, the collectivization of agriculture, and the formation of people's communes. The new economic and political organizations that emerged have made peasant life more comfortable and secure, but many economic and status differentials and traditional customs remain resistant to change. Focusing on rural Kwangtung province, William L. Parish and Martin King Whyte examine the rural work-incentive system, village equality and inequality, rural health care and education, marriage customs, and the position of women, among other topics, to determine what and how much of the traditional Chinese ways of life is left in Communist China.

Village and Family in Contemporary China

Village and Family in Contemporary China PDF Author: William L. Parish
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226645919
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440

Get Book Here

Book Description
After 1949 the Chinese Communists carried out land reform, the collectivization of agriculture, and the formation of people's communes. The new economic and political organizations that emerged have made peasant life more comfortable and secure, but many economic and status differentials and traditional customs remain resistant to change. Focusing on rural Kwangtung province, William L. Parish and Martin King Whyte examine the rural work-incentive system, village equality and inequality, rural health care and education, marriage customs, and the position of women, among other topics, to determine what and how much of the traditional Chinese ways of life is left in Communist China.

Urban Life in Contemporary China

Urban Life in Contemporary China PDF Author: Martin King Whyte
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226895491
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Get Book Here

Book Description
Through interviews with city residents, Martin King Whyte and William L. Parish provide a unique survey of urban life in the last decade of Mao Zedong's rule. They conclude that changes in society produced under communism were truly revolutionary and that, in the decade under scrutiny, the Chinese avoided ostensibly universal evils of urbanism with considerable success. At the same time, however, they find that this successful effort spawned new and equally serious urban problems—bureaucratic rigidity, low production, and more.

A Village with My Name

A Village with My Name PDF Author: Scott Tong
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022633905X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Get Book Here

Book Description
An “immensely readable” journey through modern Chinese history told through the experiences of the author’s extended family (Christian Science Monitor). When journalist Scott Tong moved to Shanghai, his assignment was to start the first full-time China bureau for “Marketplace,” the daily business and economics program on public radio stations across the US. But for Tong the move became much more: an opportunity to reconnect with members of his extended family who’d remained there after his parents fled the communists six decades prior. Uncovering their stories gave him a new way to understand modern China’s defining moments and its long, interrupted quest to go global. A Village with My Name offers a unique perspective on China’s transitions through the eyes of regular people who witnessed such epochal events as the toppling of the Qing monarchy, Japan’s occupation during WWII, exile of political prisoners to forced labor camps, mass death and famine during the Great Leap Forward, market reforms under Deng Xiaoping, and the dawn of the One Child Policy. Tong focuses on five members of his family, who each offer a specific window on a changing country: a rare American-educated girl born in the closing days of the Qing Dynasty, a pioneer exchange student, a toddler abandoned in wartime who later rides the wave of China’s global export boom, a young professional climbing the ladder at a multinational company, and an orphan (the author’s daughter) adopted in the middle of a baby-selling scandal fueled by foreign money. Through their stories, Tong shows us China anew, visiting former prison labor camps on the Tibetan plateau and rural outposts along the Yangtze, exploring the Shanghai of the 1930s, and touring factories across the mainland—providing a compelling and deeply personal take on how China became what it is today. “Vivid and readable . . . The book’s focus on ordinary people makes it refreshingly accessible.” —Financial Times “Tong tells his story with humor, a little snark, [and] lots of love . . . Highly recommended, especially for those interested in Chinese history and family journeys.” —Library Journal (starred review)

Improving Village Governance in Contemporary China

Improving Village Governance in Contemporary China PDF Author: Xuefeng He
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004448284
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Get Book Here

Book Description
Based on an in-depth investigation of different regions of China's vast countryside, Improving Village Governance in Contemporary China vividly describes rural governance mechanisms against the background of China's rapid urbanization. China’s rural areas vary greatly from region to region with respect to the pace and mode of change. Rural governance in China is decided by how the state transfers resources to villages, and by the linkage between the transfer style and the specific situation of each village. Only when grassroots governance is based on rural democracy (with peasants as the core) can villages become more harmonious.

On Rural Society and Village Governance in Contemporary China

On Rural Society and Village Governance in Contemporary China PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004680888
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 383

Get Book Here

Book Description
The rapid marketization of rural labor, agricultural products, and land has dramatically reshaped village life and its structures of governance. This volume, edited by Alexander F. Day, collects twelve key essays translated from Chinese on this transformation of rural society and governance over the past 20 years. These essays, originally published in the leading Chinese-language journal Open Times (开放时代), cover class differentiation, the atomization of rural society, the hollowing out of rural governance, land transfer, rural activism against marketization, lineage politics, the role of agricultural cooperatives, the transformation of small peasant farmers into wage labor, and the disintegration and expansion of peasant petitioning, all exploring the transformation in rural China during the post-socialist era.

Gao Village Revisited

Gao Village Revisited PDF Author: Mobo C F Gao
Publisher: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
ISBN: 962996578X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
The personal stories of the Gao villagers demonstrate and are related to changes in China. This is a close study of Gao Village twenty years after the author, an anthropologist and native of Gao village, wrote his original ethnography Gao Village. It combines ethnographic analysis, personal vignettes, and a number of fascinating stories, which presents a convincing yet complex picture of how Gao villagers interact with the outside world. With his sympathetic and insider's approach, the author argues that rural Chinese display great entrepreneurship and inner strength of selfimprovement; they are active contributors to China's economic boom.

Contemporary China

Contemporary China PDF Author: Tamara Jacka
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107292298
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 327

Get Book Here

Book Description
China's rapid economic growth, modernization and globalization have led to astounding social changes. Contemporary China provides a fascinating portrayal of society and social change in the contemporary People's Republic of China. This book introduces readers to key sociological perspectives, themes and debates about Chinese society. It explores topics such as family life, citizenship, gender, ethnicity, labour, religion, education, class and rural/urban inequalities. It considers China's imperial past, the social and institutional legacies of the Maoist era, and the momentous forces shaping it in the present. It also emphasises diversity and multiplicity, encouraging readers to consider new perspectives and rethink Western stereotypes about China and its people. Real-life case studies illustrate the key features of social relations and change in China. Definitions of key terms, discussion questions and lists of further reading help consolidate learning. Including full-colour maps and photographs, this book offers remarkable insight into Chinese society and social change.

Marriage, Gender and Sex in a Contemporary Chinese Village

Marriage, Gender and Sex in a Contemporary Chinese Village PDF Author: Sun-Pong Yuen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317465075
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores changing concepts of marriage and gender relationships and attitudes toward sex in a rural Chinese community over the past five decades. The book is based on a study of an industrialized peasant village in Guangdong Province from 1994 to 1996 and subsequent visits from 2000 to 2002. According to the authors, the rural economic reforms of the 1980s in southern China have challenged and reinforced the deep structure of Chinese familism and this has lead to tensions between tradition and modernity. The first section of the book explores how attitudes toward marriage and courtship have changed over the past fifty years through personal accounts of three different marriages from different generations. In Part II, the transition from a traditional to a modern society is discussed from the perspective of several women from different generations. The third section focuses on sexual relationships and the growing sex trade in the village. Part IV includes updates to the original survey and takes a look at village politics.

Gao Village

Gao Village PDF Author: Mobo C. F. Gao
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824821234
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is about Gao Village, in Jiangxi province, where the author was born and brought up, leaving when he was twenty-one to study English at Xiamen University. Since emigrating to Australia in 1990, he has returned every year to Gao Village, where his brother still lives. Several accounts of village life in China have been published, but all have been by Western or urban Chinese scholars. Mobo Gao's account is in every sense one from the inside. Though written as an academic work, it does not eschew personal stories and experiences relevant to the themes addressed. These cover a forty-year period and fall into four distinct themes; the village before and after land reform; the commune system; the dismantling of the communes; and the unfolding impact of the market economy, including increased migration to urban areas, from the late 1980s onwards.

Ethnic Identity of the Kam People in Contemporary China

Ethnic Identity of the Kam People in Contemporary China PDF Author: Wei Wang
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000412938
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 159

Get Book Here

Book Description
Based on three years of fieldwork in Zhanli, a remote Kam Village in Guizhou Province, Wang and Jiang explore the complex dynamics between the discursive practices of the local government and the villagers in relation to the reconstruction of Kam identity in response to social change, particularly the rise of rural tourism. China’s profound demographic and socio-economic transformation has intensified the dominance of Han culture and language and seriously challenged the traditional cultures in ethnic minority areas. The authors draw on multiple empirical sources, including in-depth interviews with Kam villagers and local officials, field observations, media discourse, local archives and government documents. They present an engaging account of the significant compromises that government and villagers have made in relation to ethnic identity in the name of economic development, and of the tensions and struggles that characterise the ongoing process of ethnic identity reconstruction. Students and researchers in sociolinguistics, ethnography, and discourse studies, especially those with an interest in Chinese discourse, and everyone interested in issues around ethnicity (minzu) issues in China, will find this book a valuable resource.