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Multiple Forces Acting Under The Rural Daily Life

Posted on:2011-02-12Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:G S TaoFull Text:PDF
GTID:1116360308480676Subject:Sociology of Ethnicity
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Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, especially the reform and opening up, China's rural society has undergone tremendous changes. However, the development process and condition in each region differ in thousands of ways, and is uneven as a whole. This attracts great concern to the academic circles, and the studies on the causes of social changes in rural areas have also become one of the predominant topics.Multifarious factors are responsible for the social changes such as natural environment, population, economy, social systems, social values and life style as well as science and technology. Reviewing the results of previous studies, we can find that most of them have relied on single factor to explain rural social changes, however, no any single factor can now fully expound the change of whole human cultural history since the society is becoming increasingly complicated. Therefore, an overall viewpoint with observation, understanding and elaboration of social changes from the multi-dimensional perspective has gradually drawn more attention. The dissertation applies to the multi-dimensional analysis framework in an attempt to conduct studies on the causes of rural social changes.The spot of field research is selected in a remote small village in northwest Ulanqab of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in that earth-taking changes have taken place in the rural areas of Ulanqab in the past 60 years since the founding of new China. Though people's lives have been greatly improved, the development pace of the area has continued to show slow and uneven tendency compared with that in the east and west part of the Region. Thus, exploring the due reasons and factors that affect the development of the area will have far-reaching significance for the promotion of both socio-economic development and people's living standards.Taking the daily life of villagers as study perspective and the role of a variety of forces (state power, market forces, rural traditional cultural practices, science and technology, and culture and communications etc.) for clues, the dissertation conducts a review and analysis of the daily life of the villagers concerning marriage, family, lifestyle, social interaction, traditional cultural practices in the past 60 years. A combination of field studies and literature research is employed to observe the interaction of the residents of the village with the community, market and the state, so as to deliberate the changes and development of rural society. In this sense, the purpose of the dissertation is to reveal the logic of rural social changes through case studies, rather than seeking a reasoning of proposition.Accordingly, the dissertation consists of five chapters. Chapter One is Introduction, which focuses on the significance of the topic, the reviewing of the previous study results, research contents and methods and brief overview of the research spot. Chapter Two describes and analyses the changes of the villagers'daily life and relevant causes from the perspective of population, marriage and family, pointing out that the reasons are mainly attributed to environmental factors, state politics and socio-economic development condition. Chapter Three conducts a detailed analysis of the impact of the country, technology and mass media on rural daily life revolving both material and spiritual life changes. Chapter Four proceeds from day-to-day activities to describe and analyze the change of blood contacts, geographical exchanges and inter-ethnic relations, assuming that two factors-marketization and mode of production-have played a crucial role in changing rural social interaction. Chapter Five explores the theoretical discussion on the basis of the empirical analysis of the previous chapters, and makes meticulous analysis of each factor affecting the changes of daily life of the rural society, then arrives at a conclusion as regards the summary in each chapter. Finally, discussions on the problems yet to be solved in rural communities are carried out as well as the reflection on the future development.Based on the observation and analysis of everyday life in a mountain village, the dissertation holds that changes in rural society are the results of interaction of multiple factors, but the roles played, the extent reached and the directions focused are different. Foreign technology, the concept infiltration and other elements can only exert temporary effect to certain degree or on certain aspects. A lasting effect, however, has to depend on the government's long-term policy encouragement and support, and also on the government-led initiative to promote changes in participation, so as to make exogenous forces actually transform into the power of the area for development. Hence, the government's roles as planner and promoter will ensure to certain extent the effectiveness and authority of changes, which is particularly important to less developed rural areas, especially regions in the central Inner Mongolia short of mature self-variables. Meanwhile, the mobilization of rural power within the organization to bring the community spirit and cohesion to its full play is the inner driving force to promote rural social development.
Keywords/Search Tags:multi-strength, daily life, social changes, rural society
PDF Full Text Request
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