Change Of The Public Life In Rural China

The issue of public life in rural society has always been at the brim of rural study. From the perspective of village public life, this paper probes into the changes of the rural China through a village called Xiacun in the West-south of Shandong province. For this it tries to understand how the public life of a common village has been shaped by the invasion of the outer forces. Based on the historical analysis, this paper divides the village' public life into three periods: pre-period of PRC, collectivization period and post-collectivization period, and describes the public life of each period. When analyzing the logic of the change of Village Xia' s public life, it imports two variables, namely, the state and the market. The thesis mainly analyzes how the rural society is influenced by the state power, and how the idea and rules of market penetrates into the rural village. It emphasizes on that how the two variables influence the communications between people in the village and how they changes people's social connection form and degree. At last, the paper takes deeply discussion about the relation between the public life and the democratic governance of the village, and points out that re-constructing organic and benign public life is a necessary approach to enhance the validity and legitimization of the village' democratic governance under the present institution arrangement.