Institutional Policy Changes, And Mongolian Rural Society

The development of ethnic regions and social change of minorities is one of the most important issues, to which Chinese sociology and anthropology has always been paying attention. Among these researches, the relative studies about Mongolian regions occupied important roles. Since the reform and open policy, the shaking changes of Mongolian regions have taken place, arousing a lot of interest of scholars. Based on the previous researches, this paper tries to take the state institution and policies as a main clue to describe and interpret the social and cultural changes in Mongolian regions.This paper is a trace study, basing on the research conducted a decade ago. It chooses four different types of villages in Tongliao City of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region as the research objects. On one hand, it links literature information with investigated data to form a integrated view of social changes in this area; on the other hand, through tracing the two related researches and contrasting those survey data, it exhibits the process and character of social, economic and cultural changes, also it gives a interpretation to this process from the view of state policy changing.The social changes of Mongolian regions occur in the multi-dimensional way. The productive mode represents the changesfirstly. Then, it leads to changes in lifestyles, behaviors, thinking styles even values of Mongolian. The social and cultural changes in Mongolia-nationality areas is mainly caused by syncretism of many nationalities, such as the situation of living together, frequently communion in daily life and intermarriage among nationalities. As external factors, state institution and policies are important strength and the main impetus for material social changes. Mongolian Social Changes can be regarded as the result of the combined effects of interior and external factors. Thus, this thesis uses state-society view as theoretical analysis frame. According to these investigated data, we can understand the process of changes in Mongolian society through the interaction between state power and grass roots. Through the investigation and analyses to these Mongolia villages, this paper considers that state institution and policies are more important to ethnic areas than the other areas, because of a lack of internal development in ethnic areas. Moreover, due to the various particularities in ethnic regions, there exists a doubt for the applicability of state policies. Nowadays, some of the state polices bring benefits to the development of this region, but also a lot of negative impact. The state policies for ethnic regions should be pertinent. The whole paper is divided into 5 chapters. The first chapter is the introduction, briefly discussing the academic theme and suppose, reviewing previous relative studies, giving a brief description toinvestigated areas and research spots, also expounding study design, analysis method and theoretical frame in detail. Based on the historical literature materials and interview data, combined with state policies in every period as well, the second chapter discusses the process of social and cultural changes in this region. According to two-time questionnaires, the third chapter exhibits the ten-year changes of population, marriage, family, production, consumption and life style through both horizontal and lengthways angle. The fourth chapter emphasizes to analyze the interview data. The main concerns are recently series of state policies for country land, distributing system and administration. It also mentions the objective influences on the daily life of local residents caused by these policies and residents' subjective feelings to them. Based on the three preceding chapter's empirical analysis, the fifth chapter carries through theoretical analysis, with concrete analysis to the importance of state institution and policies in the process of Mongolian social changes; meanwhile, it thinks over and prospects the relationship between state policies and development of ethnic regions.For practical meanings, this study attempts to use village study to exhibit the social and cultural changes of Mongolian region. In way of tracing investigation and contrastive analysis, it demonstrates the characters and prospects of its changes, responding to people's concern to the development of Mongolian region. For academic meanings, thisresearch tries to explore the interrelation between state policies and social changes through village research. It wants to probe the interaction between state and society in such a minority community, and discuss with the relative theory of social changes in Mongolian society.