The Social Networks In Agricultural Production: The Situation, Trend And Construction

Since the implementation of the household contract responsibility system, China's rural society has witnessed significant changes.These changes also caused interpersonal communications different than before, resulting in a new pattern of relationships of the rural society. Regardless of the facts or theoretical perspective, the current China's rural areas are in different stages of development of the process of modernization.The trend of industrialization and urbanization in some areas is accelerating, but the trend in other areas is not as good as the front. Even though the different degrees of the development,but farmers in the all rural areas also are affected by modern factors. Therefore, they communicate with other people differently than before, resulting in the relationships diversity and complexity of the rural. We need to know about the changes of the inpersonnal relationships and the social networks constructing by relationships based on an empirical study of certain rural farmers .And further more, we need to grasp the development trend of rural relationships and social networks.To get an empirical study of rural interoersonal relationships,the study should focous on some field.Relying on the certain field , we can obtain "deep description" research and more detailed rural interpersonal conclusions. Agricultural production is such one of the fields.Agriculture in China's society has always been the major production activity.In the agricultural production activities, the interpsonal relationship is the basis of all social relationships, and it is important for us to know the social changes. As China's a series of social changes, the situation of the farmers' communication with others also changed, this study has an important theoretical and practical significance. This article researches the rural relationships of different areas, different stages of development, and it could add the research of this question. In addition, this study can provide the bases on the social development strategies policy and promote the rural economic development.This article takes Q village in Heilongjiang Province as an example and studies the characteristics of the interpersonal relationships in agricultural production activities. Q village is not a region of the traditional sense of agricultural production, the region's agricultural production is gradually modernization, and the farmers in there are being affected by many factors such as science, technology, etc. The farmers take their main time and energy in agricultural production. And their social networks also become different and change because of the social changes. The research methods in this article are the field observation, questionnaire, interview and literature, and in which the cases interview is the most important method. Based on integrating these research methods, we can study the relationships further more.According to Q village farmers' major content in the production activities, their activities can be divided into the decision-making, loan, information, land-transfer, employment, as well as other cooperation activities.This article studies and analyses the characteristics of the interpersonal relationships and social networks in the divided fields of agricultural production activities. In the decision-making activities, the family relationships networks have a certain impact, in particular the "family" contact with the "small family" close. The farmers have to distinguish different forms and number in the rural loaning activities, and they lend money in their networks which should also pay interests now. Information in agricultural production activities plays an important role, and it is also divided two species by the farmers, including competitive and non-competitive information which may give different people in the social networks. The allocation of resources within the social networks performance more prominent in the land-transfer activities, the activities of the farmers package by the terms and conditions of their own, it requires cooperation, cooperation in the selection of targets in the social network within, and they want to choose the cooperation partner with suitable conditions which leads the scope of such cooperation rather narrow. The farmer must choose some workers for the agricultural production activities, because they do not complete by themselves, and according to the different interests they choose the ones of the employment, which has become one of the characteristics different from the past. As the market principles affecting the farmers' life and production, some of the smaller co-operation is still going on, but also appears to be weakening trend.Based on the investigation of the cases of the Q village, this article uses the theories of the interpersonal relationships and the Social Network analysis methods to study the relations and networks in the agricultural production activities, and also uses a comparison method, comparing the traditional with the current rural relationships, especially the relationships in agricultural production activities, and comparing the some rural areas which are in different economic development level, and found the features of the networks' building, use, maintenance in these activities.According to the study of the relationships and the social networks of famers in agricultural production activities, we find that the role and impact of the family relationships have been weakening gradually than before. Although the role and impact of the family relationships in the production of various fields exist, but because of the rise in productivity, the impact of a series of social change, the relationships of the past did not have the status, the dependence between the families has been gradually reduced. Famers might meet various issues of production, they accord to different events to choose some persons and also to establish the relationships which always make the network instability and form a non-steady-state. Because of different issues in the production, the use, maintenance and establishment of relationships are on the basis of interest gradually, and make the formation of the network is gradually showing benefits of the trend. Face and Favor still play an important role in the people's activities. In addition, as the market rules are gradually entering to agricultural production areas, the relationships between people are not only the family relationships or geopolitical relationships, contractual relationships also enter into the social network, form a "mixing networks", and the relationships mixing trend is more and more obvious.The reasons of these changes of the relationships and networks were the rise in productivity to make the social division of labor than before, farmers also expanded the scope of the social division, and the Government to promote the country existing management system reform, and modern lifestyle to replace the traditional one, etc. While the current rural relationships' perspective is healthy, but there are also some problems, such as obvious utilitarian, superficial contacts, accelerating the social polarization, a lack of cooperation, and these problems should be resolved to promote the rural development.In short, the study about the relationships in the agricultural production is an important perspective to grasp the development and the structure of the rural society, and an important aspect to construct a harmonious society.