This collection of 14 papers is the product of a 2010 workshop held in Denmark. The authors are mainly Scandinavian and PRC scholars. Their sources included fieldwork, interviews and documentary research. This anthology has a major unifying theme, expressed somewhat awkwardly by the title, Organizing Rural China – Rural China Organizing, which points to two fundamentally differing orientations to rural development, i.e. top-down versus bottom-up. The distinction is cogently analysed by Thøgersen's chapter on political and academic thinking about how to modernize and organize rural China. In the top-down view, the state, as well as many urban intellectuals, see peasants as backward, mired in superstition and incapable of modernizing without the state's authoritative guidance. This patronizing mind-set is exemplified by a Fujian Party school researcher's remark: “Metaphorically speaking, the countryside and its villagers are like children about to be weaned. They still need milk, but also need adults in order to be weaned” (p. 73).
Conversely, according to the bottom-up view, peasant culture and customs, reliance on personal networks including kinship and lineages, the importance attached to face, and religious practices are not necessarily dysfunctional or in need of correction by outsiders. Ma Hua and Xu Yong – the latter a well-known specialist on village elections – regard these rural cultural practices and customs as “inevitable Chinese characteristics” (p. 96) that could be adapted to new purposes. These scholars do not reject intervention in village society but instead call for a respectful understanding of cultural and social realities. They note that formal organizations imposed from above are often grafted onto society and hence have little impact. They often start with “great fanfare,” but then “end in defeat” (p. 95), remaining external to the “life mechanisms” of villages (p. 97). Ma and Xu see traditional relationships of trust as eroding under the onslaught of the market economy, but argue that modern organizations such as cooperatives can build up new forms of trust provided they are based on the genuine participation and felt needs of peasants. Their views contrast starkly with those of Liu Yuqiang's chapter on “failed villages,” which sees the persistence of traditional values and practices as the result of state power failing to penetrate the village and set up modern organizations.
Case studies illustrate different forms of top-down versus bottom-up approaches. Svensson's chapter on lineages and the state shows that conflict between the two is not inevitable. State promotion of tourism and the preservation of China's cultural heritage as by restoring village temples can serve to strengthen lineages. In another context, microcredit, Ane Bislev finds that some distance from society is needed. Microcredit functions best when programmes work within existing local structures but without becoming fully captured by them, lest guanxi ties lead to the exclusion from credit of those who need it most, namely the marginalized poor. Rolandsen's chapter on urban cadres sent on modernizing missions to the countryside sees irony in the requirement that they should not get caught up in village particularism but must instead uphold impersonal, i.e. “modern,” norms. Yet, these same urban cadres use guanxi relationships in their home units in order to mobilize resources for their rural missions. This is another way of saying that urban society is hardly immune from Chinese particularism and that urban and rural norms are not necessarily all that far apart.
Rolandsen rightly notes that the emphasis on changing rural values and practices “shrouds the fact that the urban-rural divide rests on the unequal distribution of resources, not on different attitudes towards social and economic development” (p. 80). Bunkenborg's chapter on medical care illustrates this point by showing that villagers may choose to use folk medicine, including spirit mediums and faith healers, simply because Western medicine is too expensive. Peasant distrust towards outsiders is, after all, rooted in the experience of six decades of exploitation of the countryside for the benefit of the cities, manifested in recent years by the massive expropriation of farm land and the consignment of peasant migrants to second-class urban citizenship. (In fairness, policies adopted during the last ten years of “giving more and taking less from the countryside” reflect a more positive state stance toward the rural sector.)
Still another theme that emerges is the deep distrust harboured by the Party-state towards the rise of autonomous organizations that might threaten its control. Thøgersen notes that the sociologist Yu Jianrong's proposals to establish independent peasant associations do challenge the Party's monopoly of power. Yet, there is a patent need for empowerment of villagers to defend their interests. In the absence of empowerment, tensions in the relations between state and rural society will persist. Thus, the chapter by Delman and Yang Minhong on the 2008 melamine milk scandal argues that refusal to empower villagers to organize was one reason why the scandal occurred.
Continuity and change in state strategies is discussed in Goebel's chapter on “Government propaganda and the organization of rural China.” He distinguishes between a strategy of divide and rule – which in the 1990s pitted peasants and the centre against local cadres who were blamed for having imposed heavy taxes and fees – and a more recent one of “unity through strength,” exemplified by the 2006 program of building a “new socialist countryside.” Jonathan Unger's historical overview finds substantial continuities in rural organization.
Some chapters deal with matters rarely discussed in the literature. One is Cuiming Pang's “Native place in cyberspace: the civic engagement of a cyber community.” Another is Mette Halskov Hansen's analysis of how student cadres in a rural boarding school manoeuvre between the demands of the teachers and of their classmates.
In sum, this is a welcome addition to the literature on rural China.
