West Social

Based on the fieldwork observing the community organizations in the Shi Street– a traditional administrative street area in the west of old city of Guangzhou, this dissertation aims to discuss the relationship between the great tradition and the little tradition as well as the social conjunction in the urban society, while urbanism as a life style and urban spirit in the residents'daily life is also discussed.Familism is considered as the main tradition in the Chinese rural society, with community organizations as the secondary structure. While in the city, after the revolution and state-building by the Communist Party of China, the old urban associations were destroyed, the professional corporations were replaced by the people's organizations, and the grass-root community organizations were reconstructed. New regime cleaned up the old social structure and changed the urban government system into a single administration by constructing the"unit"system and street bureau. This is the context of the reemerging of the urban community organizations nowadays.The dissertation provides three typical community organizations in the Shi Street. The urban resident committee has been set up to meet the need of state-building by organizing the unorganized city residents since the beginning of liberation. It is now the unit-like organization which has dual identities between the state and the society. The Guangzhou Manchu Association is the sodality in regard to ethnic identity and utilization of cultural resource. It also supports the elderly and the poverty of the ethnic group in both psychological and financial ways."Life spring"Volunteer Association is the grass-root voluntary organization which is more civilian and less official, dedicating itself to transmitting the ideas of commonwealth and to helping the poverty-stricken young from the communities in receiving education. It is indicated that this kind of grass-root commonalty demonstrates commonality and voluntary spirit which is urbanism in citizen's society.The thesis explores the sociality of the community organizations, such as their socialization personnel, socialization motivation, socialization's function and socialization operation logic. But there're still powerful state influences on practices of the community organizations including state authorization, state resource control and state identity. It's so called statism in this study. The statism and the sociality of community organizations are considered as the interaction between the great tradition and little tradition in the urban society. The Shi Street is"the organizing society"as an illustration.