Folklore Ethnography Studies On The Everyday Life And Livelihood Strategies In Rural-Urban Village Studies

In the process of urbanization, with the rapid expansion of urban layout, more and more farmers who live in the villages in rural-urban village lost their land; while at the same time, with the rise of working boomers, more and more farmers who lived in the villages far from the cities abandon the farming land and begin to work in cities. Regardless of the "lost land" or "abandoned land", traditional man-land relationship of these villages has changed dramatically. Correspondingly, the labor patterns and everyday life of the farmers have also undergone a great change. Rural-urban villages, due to its geographical location and traffic convenience, become the havens of the farmers who lost their lands or abandoned their lands. The two groups of farmers, living in the same geographical space and facing different external environment and policy arrangements, manage different lives to maintain the stability of urban villages on the surface. This dissertation argues relatively stable social structure and social order in rural-urban villages, which is the result of various forces, not only including the internal forces of the game but also the interaction of the villages and external forces, such as cities and the state.In the development urbanization, rural-urban villages which lies between urban and rural area, whose land system and man-land relationship are easy to change. The change of land system and man-land relationship will influence the villagers to make different choice of actions based on the living on the maximum, and these actions affect both the individual choice of lifestyle, and affects the social structure of the whole village. For this reason, the main concern of this dissertation is the livelihood strategy choices of different rural-urban villagers and the implied meaning behind these choices, during the changes of social life and social structure which are caused by land system and man-land system.This dissertation is the folklore study on the livelihood strategies, social action and village life of the villagers in Yao village, an rural-urban village near to Beijing. The study reflects on the seemingly insubstantial narrative of daily life, mainly about social resources, village identity and construction of relationships, etc., which are very fleeting or dispersed in everyday life. By investigating the daily life of landless peasants and migrant farmers in Yao village, combined with related research works, mainly to find out the logic behind the choice of livelihood strategies and actions when the man-land relationship change occurs.Two targets will be achieved in this dissertation. The first is to render a picture of the daily life of rural-urban villagers which experience the process of urbanization, as the life which is trivial, chaotic and hard to notice makes a very vivid sense. The second, based on the description of village life, is to analyze how the daily actions and livelihood strategy choices are influenced by tacit knowledge and wisdom which come from the traditional habits, and to explore the social structure of the villages and the reconstruction of the social order.In this dissertation, the main innovation is showed in the following three aspects:first, it present a folk records text describing the daily life of villagers in rural-urban village, and through ethnographic research to explore how common people to understand the meaning of life; second, the subject of daily life action is treated as research object while daily life as analysis text, which is both complement and challenge compared with the folklore study in the past, as it expands the existing folklore research ways; third, more emphasis are put on the dominant position of the villagers and researcher’s personal feelings, in addition, study the living condition and its expression and understanding of the meaning of life by the way of folklore, to a certain extent, practices the concept of village life for the entire study of folklore.The main structure of the paper is as follows:The first part is introduction, which introduces the study origin, object, significance and related works, and elucidate the basic concepts, research methods, and field work experience.The second chapter describes the profile of Yao village by straightforward style of writing. It analyzes the space constitution of static Yao villagers’lives in geographical and social significance from the aspect of space, boundary and the production of meaning. And then it analyzes the man-land relationship changing process of Yao village, a rural-urban village, since 1948.The third chapter study the process of work pattern changes of the villagers who are living in Yao village currently. It analyzed the livelihood choice of both the village residents and transient population and comes to the conclusion that the changes of work pattern cause the changes of villager individuals, social relations and their relationship with the country.The fourth chapter focuses on the changes of Yao village villagers caused by account and identity vary. With the accelerated process of urbanization, rural-urban villagers feel the embarrassment and frustration in identity reconfirming when they lost the abandon the land.The fifth chapter pay attention to the village social network construction of Yao village. Man-land relationship’s change causes work patterns change, and also makes the decline of the traditional blood relationship. The villagers of Yao village rebuild an effective network of relationships by giving new meaning to the traditional ways, which includes the daily entertainment activities of social behavior, the functioning of the traditional "human" relationship, as well as "fellow Circle" and "familiar" relationship made by floating population by their painstaking efforts.The sixth chapter concerns the political operation system of Yao village. At first, it introduce the political organization structure which is built by "Murai", and then analyze the function of village cadres; in the following part, it explores the changing process from traditional authority to modern legal authority and the resulting social problems. At last, the interaction between the villagers, village cadres and grass-roots government is examined by a certain event.The last chapter is the conclusion, based on folklore as a whole text, it tries to probe the internal logic of livelihood strategy choice and the meaning of life which implied in the actions when villagers in the face of the external environment to survive pressure.