Case Study On The Role Construction Of "College Student Village Officials"

To address the "agriculture-countryside-peasant" problem, provinces like Jiangsu and Hainan initiated to employ college graduate students to be grass-root cadres since the 1990s. In 2008, Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee issued Opinions on Employing College Graduate Students to Work in Villages (trail implementation), which decided to spend five years on designating 100,000 college graduate students to work in villages and incorporated the "college student village officials" plan into the framework of the consolidation of state's political power. Since then, "college student village officials" plan entered a phase of integrated development.This dissertation's analyzing framework is based on the role theory. It applies the research method of literature review to interpret the policy of "college student village officials". It also uses participatory observation and interview of qualitative research methods to analyze this group of role players, namely college graduate students, on how to practice the role of "college student village officials" thus constructing this new type of social role. This dissertation divides the process of constructing the role of "college student village officials" into four inter-connected phases, namely 1) obtaining the role. The "college student village officials" will first face the expectancy system built by the state and other people in the process of obtaining the role. And as the norms of this new social role, this kind of expectancy will be the start point and reference system of role construction; 2) recognizing the role. The "college student village officials" will perceive oneself in the new position in this phase. The phase is closely connected with one's status in social structure and the social role played within. It mainly includes "college student village officials" imagination on their roles, perception on other people's expectancy and judgment on their own situation; 3) understanding the role. Role understanding is the capability to experience other people's role and is the basis of the role activities of "college student village officials" It mainly includes their experience of countryside life, code acquisition in the interactivities with peasants, and collision and adaptation in understanding the role thus acquiring the ability to perform the basic role activity; and 4) playing and realizing the role. Role behavior is the styles of playing the role which is influenced by individual and social environment. It includes game playing between "college student village officials" and grass-root political power, displaying their advantages in knowledge and resources in promoting development according to village's local circumstances, and acquiring other people's support in role playing and role realization based on self identification.The research finds that "college student village officials" differentiate to different extent in role construction's identification phase because of different motivations and self-expectancy. And this kind of differentiation impacts the group's constructing forces in the phase of role understanding and role playing and forms four kinds of role construction modes, namely active transformation under social values, passive adaptation under social values, active transformation under personal values, and passive adaptation under personal values. These four modes display different construction forces in the phase of role recognition, role understanding and role playing. And within the four modes, the role construction of "college student village officials" is confined by factors such as limited individual capability, insufficient social support, limited countryside conditions, retained by township government and restricted power due to embarrassing identity.