Studies On The Operation Of The Social Capital In The Trade Of Land In The Countryside

The circulation of farmland has always been the key issue of the study on the countryside. It has drawn general concern from disciplines such as economics, management, demography and sociology. However, as to the study of how to realize the inherent way and course of paid transfer of peasants' right to use the land, it has not drawn enough attention from sociological researchers. In particular, there is hardly any perfect and profound study on the general trade of the right to use the land among peasants. Therefore, the present study chooses a basic community known as Yang village as the subject. In this paper, peasants are regarded as the main body participating in the trade of farmland. Social capital has been introduced as a variable. Through the definition and classification of social capital as well as the establishment of analytic perspective of the system of social capital.Based on the case study of the process of farmland trade among peasants, the research has analyzed the basis, approach, course and function of various social capital in the farmland trade, so as to reveal the inherent way and course of farmland trade, and the logic of farmers' action.Personal relationship is a type of social capital on the micro level. It is a perspective of embedded ego, and the outcome of individual's incorporation into network. It refers to the network of personal relationship which helps reduce costs and increase benefits in the trade of the land contractual management right. Agrestic trust, human feeling, face and mutual benefits are the basis of this type of social capital. In the trade of farmland, kinship is the most frequently used social capital. The geo-relation ranks the second, while the relation of family property is very weak. It is obvious that in the closed and relatively simple rural society, people look for relations in light of the theory of " difference preface pattern", namely, from strong relation to weak relation.Community-standardized social capital is on the meso level, which is a perspective of structure. With an emphasis on the pattern and feature of the network mode between individuals, it refers to the non-institutional factors in community which contribute to the trade, such as local customs, religious beliefs and moral values. The " difference preface pattern", close and self-sufficient agro-farming economy, and the traditional culture have laid a solid foundation for the existence and development of these factors. Therefore, action logic in the rural areas is mainly subject to unofficial system, and the villagers' daily activities are restricted in the framework of folk regulations, local customs, religious beliefs and moral values.The external environmental social capital is on the macro level, which is a perspective of embedded structural perspective. It stresses how the network and organization, in which social capital operates, are embedded into the bigger political, economic and social systems. It refers to the environment of systems, laws and the society, which make the farmland trade legal and reasonable. Farmers' access to the external environment is the basis of the operation of this social capital in the rural society.