| America's lost at Vietnam war in the 1970s renewed a concentration on farmer problem in the academia . And they drew their attention mainly upon S.E Asia's"farmer society". After the precise investigation of southern Burma and its agricultural history , James Scott , a famous politics and anthropology scholar , published his The Moral Economy of the Peasant:Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. However , against Scott's The moral economy ,Samuel Popkin in The Rational Peasant: the Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam, raised the rationalism of the peasant instead.This long-lasting controversy initiated by the S.E Asia's farmer society also stimulated the attention of Chinese academia . Influenced by a economic- anthropologist called Karl Polanyi, Philip C. C.Huang , an American scholar of Chinese origin , generalized the tradition of peasant theory into three types: Formalism , Substantialism and Marxism . According to this taxonomy , he pointed out three identities of Chinese petty farmers based on his investigation of North China : a profit-seeker, a subsistence-producer and an exploited cultivator. The Chinese petty farmer is the combination of these three Characteristics .Thus ,both Scott and Popkin saw one part of the whole iceberg .Accordingly, many Chinese scholars began to criticize the"moral economy"–"rational farmer"controversy with the concrete situation in China. Historian Qin Hui pointed out that the conventional Chinese countries is neither a"moral economy"for the reason that it is hard to develop autonomous communal moral identification under the bureau- cracy of monarchy ,nor a"rational farmer"due to the weakly communal moral identification of the"moral economy"was not the result of modern"individualism"or"pence capita- list's". So it is not suitable to discuss whether it is moral economy or rational farmer. Socialist Guo Yuhua stated that though it is not hard to find proof of"moral economy"and"rational farmer"in farmers'everyday life , these two characteristics can appear simultaneously in the same process of choosing .All the criticism towards the former topic is based on the concrete structure of China's society. However this structure itself is experiencing the great transformation. The migration of the rural workforce is one of the basic facts in the countryside. Mr. Fei Xiaotong has made a classic generalization of this phenomenon : The one is the local industrialization mode ,also called the"Sunan mode"which is the so-called"separated from the cultivation without leaving the hometown"and depends on the local enterprise . The other is the"Wenzhou mode"which is the so-called"leaving the hometown after separated from the cultivation"due to the scarcity of resource in there. However, in such a special society as China has developed, there is another mode which is different from these two forms. That is so-called"leaving the hometown without separated from the cultivation"the most representation of this form is the"Mai ke",which is popular in Guanzhong plain .The phenomenon of"Mai ke"(Mai ke is one kind of peasants who harvest for other peasants)has been lasted for thousands of years and it has five very special characteristics . For example , Mai ke's employment is a kind of"smallholder employing smallholder"and it doesn't conform to"employing logic"of economy circle ; so is the characteristic of the prevalent appearance of Mai ke during farm reformation and People's communism movement.Based on the scrutiny of classic petty farmer theories ,this paper consider behaviors of"Mai ke"and the employer , trying to reflect the formal perspective of China's flow mode of country people . At the same time ,I am trying to discuss the explaining ability of"moral economy"–"rational farmer"towards farmers'behavior on the example of the"Mai ke"and the employer's behavior selected . Finally it searches the workable way of the historical behavior of the"Mai ke".
|
PDF Full Text Request