Is The Village Or The Community

This research provides an ethnographic document of the associational life in contemporary south rural China. Based on the communitarianism theory, I redefined the concept of community as associational living experiences featured by "solidarity, mutuality and autonomy". The thick description of rural life in south China will be proposed around the three dimensions.Starting with a review of the dominating framework of rural research, I pointed out that the dualism of state-society paradigm is not enough to understand the associational life in rural China. Hence I present that community redefined would be an inspiring perspective. Then I reviewed the history of the word "community", clarifying the exact meaning of the concept in this research. Based on the communitarianism theory, I redefined the concept of community as associational living experiences featured by "solidarity, mutuality and autonomy". I hope to present a thick description of rural life to show the production of community experiences in villages, and the relations between state power and the production.I employed emersion observation and indepth interview to get my data. Using the materials I got from the stay during 2008-2011 in a small village in Ruian City, Zhejiang Province, I am able to present the multi-dimensional associational life in the village. Their associational life mainly happens in the relation network of kinship, religion and neighborhood.On the other hand, the village committee and the party branch has been absent from villagers’daily lives. It seems impossible that the state would like to reinforce the control via party branches. But the urbanization process in this area indicates that the state still hold tight control over villagers. The main conflict between villagers and the state lies in the property rights. Villagers tend to have complete rights inside the protection of the community, while the state totally denies that. The urbanization aims at ripping the villagers from the land, which would be a huge negative force for the community.