Research On The Changes Of China Rural Folk Mutual Aid Since Modern Times

It is a very common phenomenon that rural mutual aid has been living in rural social production and daily life, In rural social life, the rural mutual aid not only play a more important role than the national rural social security system in rural welfare, but also is a kind of indispensable supplement to the national rural social security system, rural mutual aid constitutes an important content of the countryside in daily life. Based on the basis of traditional folk culture, rural mutual aid is the right key to understand our rural society, and it is necessary to utilize this content in the new rural welfare construction. However, in relevant social science research field,there is seldom attention is paid to rural mutual aid, not only domestic social security theory study is not involved in the concept of traditional culture casts, mode of thinking and values, but the country's social security system design is not considered traditional cultural factors. So this is an important problem and insufficiency in our welfare system research. A country's social welfare system Settings will be affected by traditional culture, especially the influence of the traditional welfare culture, so national welfare system should be based on the traditional folk welfare, or succeed to the traditional folk welfare. Then what about our traditional folk welfare? Previous studies on traditional folk welfare either focused on the thought field, or displayed the mutual aid experience by the case research simply, but was lack of systematic interpretation of traditional mutual aid. Even never inquired if the traditional mutual aid has had qualitative changes since the ancient times to now and under the circumstances that our social life situation has changed much more today. But these two problems just provide key basis as we think about how to design our social welfare system, especially the rural social welfare system. This paper will do a systematic interpretation to the traditional folk mutual aid starting from the meaning above.This research conducted a systematic study of the rural mutual aid based on present relevant researches which incontinuous and dispersive, the rural folk mutual aid tradition was comprehensive researched under the situation of "folk traditional culture", "rural social changes" and "country grass-roots society life practice ". This article focused on the transformation problems of rural mutual aid in the process of rural modernization, therefore, this research took the changes of rural society since modern times as a clue, according to systematically discussing the different period of rural mutual aid's range, type, form, function and significance of sustaining power, to explore what on earth had changed on rural mutual aid during rural modernization? Why? What were not changed? Why not? Hope to achieve knowledge on the regularity of mutual aid system in the situation of dynamic and static combination of change. And based on the above the author conducted a briefly comparison between the national social welfare system and the rural social welfare system, so we can analysis how to realize the national welfare system and the folk mutual aid system and idea to combine during the construction of modern welfare system. The focus of this article is to analysis the suitability of traditional folk elements which were reflected by rural mutual aid in the process of modernization.Traditional folk mutual aid is existent since the ancient times, if we want to know whether it has changed from modern rural social changes, we need to understand its original content. So the author conducted a backtrack on the traditional folk mutual aid from its idea and practice of the action. Then there were some basic ideas of the rural mutual aid be found:First, the basic form of traditional rural mutual aid is that its based on the patriarchal family and emphasized the role of family function in kindred mutual aid. is related to the basic form of folk assistance. Second, the traditional ethics and moral requirements of traditional folk mutual aid is to emphasize individual ethical obligation to help other kindred relatives must be obeyed firstly in the context of mutual aid. Third, the main way how to realize mutual help among people is the custom of association etiquette, whose foundation is the mutual return benefits interaction pattern. Anyhow, the traditional culture of "blood & ethics centered " and preface-structure values dominated the folk mutual aid. It inspires us, only the traditional culture characteristics which had shaped the idea and thd behavior of traditional folk mutual aid changed qualitatively, the changes of traditional folk mutual aid will really happen. Under the premise of the value orientation of the rural mutual aid, the author introduced the basic scope, types, characteristics and its realization ways, function, etc. So the research objecf"the folk mutual aid of rural society "can be defined in a common sense.In the late Qing dynasty and the Republic of China period "passive" social change and people's commune period of political power mandatory state plan ", "social change in rural society, though there were some changes on scope, content and form of mutual aid, the dominate idea of mutual aid and its safeguard function in folk life hadn't changed. This characteristically change of traditional mutual aid ultimately because the cultural values had done adaptability adjustment in the social changes, this adjustment made rural mutual aid still to play multiple functions in the era of social unrest and political pressure. Since the rural reform and marketization process starting, the rural individual has the right to choose mutual aid and cooperation freely, but with "interest", "rational" factors involved in rural social life in rural society, the premise, contents,basis, approaches, and even the dominate concept of the folk mutual aid changed, thus there are new characteristics form on rural mutual aid.On the conclusion part of this research, the author summarizes the research achievements from three aspects to the changes of rural mutual aid since modem times.First, there is a general understanding of rural folk mutual aid. The mutual aid among rural people is not a kind of simple behavior, it is a process of constant interaction, it is being producted and constructed continuously by the custom of association etiquette in different situation,it is full of complexity and variability in its internal. In the process of rural modernization, the folk mutual aid presents the develop trend that the scope of kindred mutual aid becomes narrow and the stability is broken, the scope of nonkindred mutual aid is expanding the range,and the closeness of traditional mutual aid is broken too; With the traditional ethic government disintegrating in the process of modernization, as a kind of social exchange act of rural mutual aid, it already no longer with traditional ethical obligations as the main basis of mutual cooperation relationships, but to interest, rural public construct new mutual aid order by this the universality of interest is primary rules. Although the folk mutual aid have changed today, the characteristics as the rural public social support resources had no change, from this sense, the mutual aid tradition is a continuation, the reason that contributed to the continuation is the traditional culture of "relational orientation" values conducted adaptability adjustment in the new period. In Market times, people still through the custom of association etiquette to establish their relationship networks, to form their mutual support social circle, then to gain the social support resources.Secondly, there is a concrete knowledge on the difference between the rural folk social welfare system and national welfare system, through the comparison, the author found the rural mutual aid build noneconomic welfare benefits for the rural public folk outside the national economic welfare system. The people arrangements the non-institutional social support which be from the support of relatives, friends and neighbors into the rural nongovernmental welfare system, by taking the national economic welfare as a longitude and the nongovernment noneconomic welfare which is in the rural folk mutual aid system as latitude, the folk construct a three-dimensional rural social welfare system for themselves spontaneouslyFinally, this article thinks, as an informal institution the rural folk mutual aid system has its own system, also has the ability to adjust to changes in society. What a powerful vitality and initiative the regional folk customs and traditions present in the rural social changes let us acknowledge, the informal institutions not only contains moral ideas, customs in its content,but also even may form some formal institutional "transcendental" mode, and in the process of the formal system establishment,it can take advantage of status or in the form of "guiding ideology" formal institutional arrangements of the theoretical basis. It inspires us, in the construction of new countryside, the rural folk knowledge, local traditional knowledge which exist as little traditional knowledge is not must lagging for it is traditional, we should respect the folk choice who possessed this kind of knowledge. This needs us arrange the national formal system design and rural informal institutional design into maximum compatibility in the new rural construction of system planning. Only these two systems are maximum compatibility in rural society, there will bring the strong power of development for rural society.