Hot off the press from M.E. Sharpe, the latest edition of Chinese Sociology & Anthropology:
Fall 2008
Vol.
41
No.
01
The Central China School of Rural Studies
Guest Editors:
Alexander Day
Wayne State University
&
Matthew A. Hale
University of Washington
The Central China School of Rural Studies Guest Editor's Introduction ALEXANDER DAY 3 The Regional Variation of Rural Governance and the Logics of Peasant Action HE XUEFENG 10 The Influence of Changing Peasant Values on Familial Relations Liwei Village, Anhui CHEN BAIFENG 30 Critique of a New Trend in Villager Self-Government Studies YING XING 43 The Path and Subject of Rural Governance Studies A Response to Ying Xing's Critique WU YI, HE XUEFENG, LUO XINGZUO, DONG LEIMING, AND WU LICAI 57 Twenty Years of Rural Political Studies The Rise and Fall of a Public Academic Movement WU YI AND LI DERUI 74
From the introduction:
"The central China school
of rural studies,” a multidisciplinary current, emerged in the late
1990s among rural sociologists, anthropologists, and political
scientists studying at the Center for Chinese Rural Studies at
Huazhong Normal University (CCRS). The name "Huazhong xiangtupai”
(hereafter "the central China school”) became attached to them
after a critical review of their work (translated in this issue of
Chinese Sociology and Anthropology) was published in 2005.
Disagreements among scholars attached to CCRS led He Xuefeng, Wu Yi,
and others to leave CCRS and found the Center for Research on Rural
Governance (CRRG) at Huazhong University of Science and Technology,
where the central China school is now largely based. The school has
provoked debate not only on the condition of rural Chinese society
and rural policy, but also on the direction of rural studies itself.
Reflecting on Chinese rural studies and influenced by the work of Fei
Xiaotong, the school has pushed for the construction of a Chinese
understanding of contemporary rural society and its transformation,
one it believes can be formed only through intensive ethnographic
research. [...]