Spontaneous Order, The State Power And The Village Transformation

This research focuses on the different kinds of villager' s group activities, tries to clarify the characters of intricate relationship between village' s spontaneous orders and the state power in China through the comparative study on the spontaneous mechanisms and the external restrictive condition, then tries to ground the argument that the state should joint with villages not only in theory but also in practice, and then educes the conclusion that the state should help villages to rebuild the political communities.To a general villager, comparing to the purely private life of individual and family part, there is the other important part of his life—group activities that mean the activities which exceed the private circle, assemble most or even all of the villagers and attach themselves to struggle for a common aim. That is termed villager' s group activities in this research. We can range and classify different kinds of villager' s group activities from the spontaneous orders dominating level to the state power dominating level under the political view, because the spontaneous orders and the state power are two most important forces abstractly, and all of activities are happened under the framework of the spontaneous orders and the state power, the differences are the dominant forces and the distance to the power. It is according to the needs of political research which includes two aspects, first, villager' s group activities are windows for us to look into the relationship between the spontaneous orders and the state power; secondly, the political research should be put into a view of the spontaneous order and the modern country' s governance.On the one hand, this research studies villager' s group activities which happen in some areas of our country nowadays in the view of the logic of history change, especially the special logic of Chinese political change. On the other hand, we study villager' s group activities under the framework of the spontaneous order and the state power.From historical and academic logic, this research clarifies an evolutive logic of relationship between the spontaneous order and the state power: the traditional villager had some self-determination while jointing the state, because the logic of their spontaneous orders were the same to the state power intrinsically, so their spontaneous orders also had the functions of governance of public affaires. Constructive orders of modern state had been embed into the villages and tried to develop their functions of modern governance, since modern state structure in late Qing dynasty. But this process was ended by malpractice called the "involution" of state power, because the national power system hadn' t been built successfully at that time. After the foundation of new China, the state power tried to destroy and substitute the traditional culture organizations drastically. In this condition, the state power went deep into villages with depth and width that hadn' t existed before, the spontaneous orders were oppressed and their functions of governing public affairs were hardly to come true. Since 1978, the state power has retreated from villages formally, but it still has arranged the self-government of villagers in political area and collective ownership / individual prosecution in economical area. In this new condition, the spontaneous orders of village have been rebounded for two reasons, one is supported by traditional roots, the other is based on new interests and institutions, the embodiments are that different kinds of villager' s group activities have been evolved, but the spontaneous orders of villages show themselves as characters and tendencies of differentiation but not a organic system. It can be proved by the questionnaires and records of the villager' s group activities in some parts of China nowadays.This research analyses the essence mechanism and conditions of village' s spontaneous orders and the state power in China through the questionnaires filled by more than three hundred villagers in more than twenty villages and the records of their group activities. Basing on the stat. of questionnaires and the analysis of the records, and concerning existent theories, this research proves the following relative propositions.There are diversiform spontaneous orders in modern Chinese villages generally, and these orders dominate the affaires which do not involve public space. This is the result of social normalization and social regress. It shows in some aspect like activities of ceremonies about birth, death and marriage, clan affaires and folk religion and so on. However, we can not deny that this kind of villager' s group activities have some functions of keeping orders. The state does not intervene into activities in this area usually.The spontaneous orders of villages not only exist in the aforementioned area, but also go down to (or happen in) village' s public affairs, it shows in kinds of spontaneous group activities which involved to most villagers' interests. But the fact is that villages show themselves as resource lacked and out- flowed, so we can not only relay on the spontaneous orders to govern the villages, but also need the state power to support them with funds, techniques and approach of organization, and when these two forces can not been joint availably, the villager' s group activities which based on the spontaneous orders are hardly access to success, especially the group activities of public project dominated by economic aim.Then in village' s public affairs near to state' s institution, which are formed as the villager' group activities of villager' s conference (and some relative activities) and appeal to higher authorities, the spontaneous orders influence on above area basing on the state' s power, so they need more cooperation and direction from village power and even from the state power, but actually to say, they haven' t been content yet.We can conclude the following structural characters of activities which involve the affairs of public areas and include that dominated by economic aim or political aim through the research: group activities concerning distributive interests and developable interests especially distributive interests can bring villager together rapidly, but can not bring them an anticipative output, that is usually because of no response from the state power (mostly the local power) and absence of elites/confidence (the fact is the absence of authority). It fully proved that available governance of villages cannot naturally bring from some modern institutions which arranged by the state, so embedding these institutions into the villages and making them be the powers and institutions of villagers' life would be more important. And in this way, elites of villages are the most important support, Contrarily, if there is no active response from the state or they can not conquer mechanism problems in their activities progresses, even if they can organize themselves basing on the state' s institutional arrangement, these villagers can not solve the problem only by themselves. In a word, villages are devoid of organic political organization.In this research, villages' public affairs are totally called politics in village, and the institutional problem of villager' s group activities are described as "the politics without output" , concretely speaking, villager' s group activities which involved with public affairs need to joint availably with the state, at the same time, they need to solve the elites/ confidence problem of themselves. But in the point view of the state, the reasons for hard accessing to success of villager' s group activities are not only the market-progress and the dissensions which are caused by individual interests, but also the ways of local states' elites' interposition, which are likely the deeper reason.So this research means that it can be plural forces participate in the governance' s structure of Chinese villages in the future. The state order can not ignore the forces of villages' spontaneous orders for they exist and act on the villages' governance. On the one hand, spontaneous orders should be exist and act on the area where they show themselves as a positive power, on the other hand, the state power should adjust its ways and areas of interpositions, and help villages to rebuild their political communities, and joint with the spontaneous orders on a new base, and then create a new governance' s structure in Chinese villages.Considering of the diversities of spontaneous orders and the differences of the state building' s condition in different villages all over the country, the same as the dissimilarities of the resource content and unlikeness of the developmental ways, we should keep our thoughts opening about national villages' governance. This research has found the complexity and diversity of villages' spontaneous orders just through only more than twenty villages, so it can be concluded that what needs to be argus-eyed treated mostly is centralize thinking. But no matter how much different it will be in concrete ways, if only we consider of the villager' s group activities and their nearly correlative villages' governance in the background of the modern state building, the total direction is the same: the country should help villages rebuild political communities, conforms villages to the modern state, and implements the plural uniting of the villages spontaneous orders and the state power.