The Changing Of Rural Periodic Market And The Transforming Of Rural Social Structure In North China

The most important characteristic of the contemporary Chinese society is that she is in the process of transformation. That is to say, she is undergoing a process from a rural, agricultural, closed and traditional society to an industrial, urban, open and modern society. At the same time, this process also converges with the process from the planned economic system to market economic system. In the era of accelerating transition, one of the factors that affect social harmony is that the rural society transition is in a sluggish condition whose main expression is the retardation of transmission of population from rural to urban area, and long-time lowness of farmers' income, and the sluggishness of the industrialization of agriculture. So, to study these problems and their restricting factors in order to push the transition of rural social structure is a main topic of sociology. This research chooses periodic market (bazaar), which embodies not only the character of traditional agricultural society but also the beginning of opening-up policy and the introduction of market economy, as its view point to study rural social transformation. This research is mainly concerned with the northern China society, which has typical agricultural characteristics, and chooses Ting Hsian (Dingzhou) as the case of the study, which was the experimental base of civil education movement 80 years ago. In the villages with well-developed agriculture and good transportation facilities, the commoditization of agricultural products is already very high. Various specialized markets amount to more than 30 places. Nevertheless, in the area of daily living of the rural residents, the periodic markets still dominates. The "village-market place-market town-town-city" evolution pattern and trend is not apparent in Dingzhou rural society. That all the periodic markets keep a five-day period is a proof. Many facets of the changes of northern China village markets cannot be explained by the existing theory, such as the small town theory of Fei Xiaotong and the market community theory of Skinner. For example, the hierarchy of periodic markets in Dingzhou is not salient, and the process that periodic markets become stores or daily markets and the process of urbanization are very slow. The standard markets are not disappearing, as Skinner predicted, but become more and more prosperous. This research has two basic hypotheses as its prerequisite. The first is the hypothesis of dual functions of rural periodic market (market participating and market avoiding). Markets provide both opportunities and pressure. The traditional rural periodic market is a kind of local market with its main function of satisfying peasants' productive needs and needs of daily living, and the risk is low in these markets. When farmers choose a self-sufficient life style, in order to avoid the outside market, periodic markets provide a place to exchange with each other. So, the peasant productive structure gears up the prosperity of the local market and also the development of market economy to some extent. But for the development of a higher, more sophisticated market and for the transformation of rural economy and social structure, the local market is also a hindering factor. The second is the hypothesis of market involution. Because of the pressure of employment and the restriction of social structural factors, the surplus work force cannot be transported out. The periodic market becomes the main channel of employment and shows a kind of fake prosperity. The multitudinous fluid vendors bazaar use industrial products to make profit from the limited rural consumption, this is the essence of "involution" of rural periodic market. The thesis investigates the historical change of the periodic markets in Dingzhou, analyses their number, period, market system and their functions, describes the function and change of temple fairs, and at the same time studies the trade channels besides periodic markets: village shops and specialized markets. When the farmers participate in the sp...