State, Huzu, And Peasants:Village Politics In Guanzhong Area,1952-1966

In the past few decades, contemporary Chinese history, or political research of China from1952to1966, has been affected by revolutionary narrative and modernization narrative, mainly inspecting the decision making and implementation process of national policy, and taking peasants as a passive recipient of institution, which more or less covers the diversity and meaning construction of politics in China. In recent years, some scholars realize the multiple-aspects of1952-1966in China. Besides the overall decision making and implementation, scholars come to focus on the grass-roots. Village politics turn out to be a new academic growth point of temporary Chinese political research.Influenced by the Writing History of infra politics between Subaltern Studies Group and the Approach of James Scott and Benedict Kerkvliet, the author takes the main fieldwork in an ordinary village, Huang Village in Guanzhong area, and uses the historical archives and related background material. This thesis analy how state power system and ideology operate in Huang Village during Agricultural Cooperative Movement, Great Leap Forward and the Socialist Education Movement, and what the strategy of Huzu, peasant, and cadres in Huang Village use to deal with state requirements. Thus, the article has no intention to embed the particular history of Huang Village into a grant historical narrative, but aims to inspect the following questions. First, as the socialist practice, how does the state-led social movement develop? What is basic orientation and how reform target is expressed? And what kind of the art of government is covered or developed? Second, as native tradition encounters with state power and ideology, how do the village cadres deal with and why? Third, in the relationship among state, Huzu, and peasants, how is the relationship in the reality, and what is the special form and communicative logic of village politics of contemporary rural China?In the process from mutual-aid team to advanced cooperative, participatory state mobilization attracts massive peasants, who work in Work Points System as a member of the cooperative for the collective economic interest. It should be noticed that, Work Points System during collectivization period not only is an policy satisfying the need of economic growth, magnifying the nature of socialism and the membership, but also a kind of labor controlling system, even a grass-roots controlling method, which represents state power permeating from producing field to social discipline. As the ideology of "communism" getting more and more radical and the spread of Great Leap Forward, collective ethics became deeply root into rural China, and equalitarianism prevails. The regard forged by People’s Commune permeates from political field to rural living life. The bodies of peasants gradually take on political images. In the Socialist Education Movement, rural cadres turn to be the object. And the organized movement of cadres as an unconventional phenomenon gradually reconstructs the cultural nexus of power of grass-roots.However, most Huzu, cadres, and peasants in Huang Village, encountering the cruel political reality, choose to accept the expression of political discourse outwardly, meanwhile, they still comply with everyday living logistics in their own empirical world, which finally leads to the inconformity of practical choose and discourse expression. On one hand, peasants are cooperative in attitude to complete self discipline according to the standard of a Socialist New Man. On the other hand, they come to the survival ethics and Huzu concepts in everyday life, and use all kinds of weapons of the weak. In the Work Points System, they assure the quality of farm working, and also show a brilliant strategy to get the work points. Once provision is cut, they take counteraction of concealed production and private distribution, borrow grain from production team, and even "steal", which reflect the survival ethics. Situations in Socialist Education Movement are more complicated. Although peasants are granted with rightful weapons by the state, they are in the same symbiosis social cultural network with rural cadres, separately using some special and informal strategies and resources to construct a space of rationality and legitimacy.We have to admit that the peasants have been intensely affected. As state power and ideology is hammered into peasants, the influence of state is continuously permeated into the rural society. Peasants gradually admit the state legality in the same process, and discipline their selves. In quitting cooperative incident, what they challenged first is not collective system or the leadership of CCP, but the dishonest behavior of some rural cadres. What’s more, they wisely eliminate the rich peasants from the resistance army in order to assure the political superiority of resistance action. During the period of Socialist Education Movement, the poor and lower-middle class peasants with political correctness are empowered to supervise rural cadres, and suppress dishonest behavior. And the courage of criticizing and reveal rural cadres is also endowed. They learn how to use the rightful weapons like People’s letter.In conclusion, the formation of Totalist Politics or Total Society is a dynamic process. It is related with the development of state power permeating from producing field to social discipline, state ideology diffusing from political field to the whole society and the reconstruction of grass-roots social culture and power net, which finally assume to be a Neo-tradition of Socialism or New Virtuocracy. However, Huzu, cadres, and peasants in Huang Village take a delicate and non-direct form to express their subsidence or resistance to government power and rules. It is an everyday politics different from official politics and advocacy politics. As the organization penetrates into rural society and state power system and ideology becomes local, the concrete peasants become abstract people, and form the national identification. In this way, village politics during the period of1952-1966as a form of infra politics, is a complicated the cultural nexus of power, which reflects in the practical configuration of relationship among state, Huzu, and peasants.