Suffering From Canals

Water and land are the core resources of agricultural society. Because land is fixed and crops cannot be transplanted, people engaged in the agricultural production are also fixed on the land, based on that, Fei Xiaotong proposed the "Rural China" theory. While the liquidity of water could cause cooperation or conflict between people, around the utilization of water can evolve a complete social culture relation which links the nation and society, history and present. On the basis of the above thinking, this article adopts anthropological field ethnography, and conducts systematical investigation on the water disputes between two cross-province villages at the upstream watershed of Zhang River. Under the "normal-abnormal" frame of rural society, it finds that on the normal days, Xi Shan village and Dong Ping village have various social interactions such as intermarriage, trading and religious life, which obscures their border; however, once there is conflict brought by water, both of them will be under the "abnormal" condition, which means one’s border is closed to the other and is open to the national force. During this process, the internal village is not homogeneous, because the individual practice of rural political elite, the communication among elites as well as the interaction between them and villagers influence the way how the national force enters villages. After the villages returns from "abnormal" to "normal" again, the national force which has entered the villages under abnormal condition will be transformed in different ways by rural political elite. Meanwhile, the villages are facing the challenges of urbanization and modernization. The main conclusions are as follows:At the upstream watershed of Zhang River where the two villages are located, before the construction of canal, the river water cannot be utilized for agricultural irrigation, and there is no water dispute. In drought years, with such problem cannot be resolved by themselves, villagers would flee to other place to make a living. It is when water is utilized that it becomes social. After that, water use and exploitation turn into focal points, which produce interpersonal relationship and some corresponding relations. On this basis, the concept of "irrigating society" has been drawn.Though villagers like Xi Shan, Dong Ping and some environs have certain characteristics of "irrigating society", they fail to form a certain type of "irrigating society". After the construction of Da Yuefeng canal and Yue Jin canal, the local people’s livelihood changed from rain-fed to irrigated agriculture, introducing rice into local culture system. When canal water was scarce, armed fight occurred between villages. But the water utilization history of this area starts from the Great Leap Forward period, because the Dragon King no longer symbolizes "water control" but becomes the "God of nature" to satisfy people’s wishes for good weather. Most importantly, as regional water management system has not been formed, there is no rule of water deploy for people to abide by. As water disputes didn’t occur within "irrigating society", they couldn’t help to settle the local deploy rules, neither could it bring about the inter-village alliance. Therefore, the armed fight between villages is not structural conflict, but a strategic one which the locals use to request national force to allocate scarce resources.The native’s initiative pursue for national force doesn’t mean they accept the national force to infiltrate thoroughly into village life, which only means they utilize national force as a usable "weapon" to realize their own needs. In this sense, the individual practice of rural political elite will have their own influence on the entering of national force to villages. Whether the rural political elite can receive recognition and respect from villagers or not centers on an important standard, that is, if he can "place" national force at a "proper" position, using it to solve the current problems while not disturbing the villagers’ daily life, it is successful and welcomed.The local canal construction begins in the Great Leap Forward, at the same time, nation embarks on the comprehensive governance of rural society. In fact, the canal construction itself is one part of the national governance. Canal, as a creation of the national top-down governance, doesn’t have a corresponding down-top endogenous order after it enters rural society. Moreover, the long-term dynamic balance is broken under the influence of canal, for water disputes become more and more frequent. Nation sets up special organization to manage the deployment of canal water. While in China, especially the rural society, the "hidden rule" is always more effective in comparison with the "appeared rule", or "literal rules". As the rural political elites utilize "hidden rule" differently, they get distinct outcome and innovative imbalance through the interaction with water-distribution organizations. On these grounds, this dissertation proposes the concept of "governance imbalance".