China Study Group

The Central China School of Rural Studies
by Day & Hale, eds. | originally published in: Chinese Sociology & Anthropology 30 dec 
Journal issue introducing an important new school of multidisciplinary rural studies & social experimentation based in Wuhan, affiliated with the Chinese New Left & the New Rural Reconstruction current

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. [...]




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Rural Studies tag cloud

academia agrarian capitalism Chinese New Left commoditization cooperatives 现代化 社会主义新农村建设,农民本位的新农村建设,生活方式,� identity land nrr peasants precarity protests rural semiproletarianization seniors social_movements sociology TAM urbanization 另类发展 土地私有化、媒体批评、三农、增收 宋儒 宗法 新农村建设 新乡村建设 殖民化 三农 三农问题 中国国情