The Practice Of Collective Action: The Analysis Of Sociology On Farmers' Appealing To The Higher Authorities For Help

Since the reform and opening up, obvious differentiation of the structure of benefits entity has taken place in villages, approximately divided into five parts: governments above county standing for nation, governments of villages and towns, village communities, village cadres and ordinary farmers. Differentiation of the benefits entity in villages has made the new-period structure of benefits in villages complex, which leads to many problems concerning farmers' appealing to the higher authorities for help in many places. Moreover, learning field pays more and more attentions into these. This thesis studies one typical case K village in Huazhong about farmers' appealing to the higher authorities for help, basing on the angle of view about collective action. This thesis uses for reference of Olson's collective action theory, McCarthy and Zald's resource mobilization theory and construction ism relative theory on collective action, and proposes analysis frame of collective action practicing process in order to explore the practicing logics and further features of farmers' collective action on the basis of expressing benefits in Chinese special background and system circumstance.For the whole frame, the thesis is divided into five chapters.The first chapter is introduction. It introduces the origin, the purpose, the significance, the literature reviewing and the methods of the research. Inspired by the related researches from two scholars Yu Jianrong and He Xuefeng and touched by cases of farmers' appealing to the higher authorities for help around me, this thesis tries to discuss the key question "How does farmers' collective action come into being?"in order to enrich and develop the collective action theory, furthermore, provide experience reference materials to further research on farmers' appealing to the higher authorities for help and village administration. Differentiation from traditional researches which studied farmers' appealing to the higher authorities for help as political phenomenon, this thesis which layes special emphasis on the angle of sociology uses field research method, collects datas by the method of depth interview, selects and adopts "the Process—Event Analysis" proposed by Sun Liping to study.The second chapter proposes the train of thought of the research and the framework of analysis. It introduces general train of thought of the research and defines the core concepts. On the basis of the collective action theories, this thesis proposes analysis frame—collective action practicing process. Seemingly, the action of farmers' appealing to the higher authorities for help is a simple process, namely social problems directly lead to action. Actually, it is a complicated practical process, namely the process of "consensus construction "and "resource mobilization".The third chapter is farmers' appealing to the higher authorities for help in "Process—Event". It introduces the background of the case, describes the matter process:"one who plays a leading role" appearing, collective action previewing a performance, fiercly games and event epilogue.The fourth chapter is the practical process of the action about appealing to the higher authorities for help: consensus construction and resource mobilization. This part expounds practical logics appearing from collective action from two aspects of "consensus construction" and "resource mobilization". The "consensus" constructed in the collective action is important condition and basis of collective action. The action of farmers' appealing to the higher authorities for help comes into being and develops exactly by a series of significance construction which experiences three processes: consensus formation, consensus mobilization, consciousness upgrading. But the consensus consciousness can't easily turn into collective action automatically, because collective action also needs resources such as money, time and members and so on. Resources such as grassroots activists' mobilization tactics, rural interpersonal relationships' net, group identification and outside support commonly set into collective action.The fifth chapter is conclusion and discussion. From the analysis on the case ,we find that collective action embodies itself during the practical process. In the practical process, it is full of activists constructing social significance, also embodies activists who apply several resources. After the discusstion on farmers' collective action, it is found that: there are rational choices from farmers in the collective action, economic rationality, survival rationality, social rationality. The deep characteristic of collective action is weak systemization. The last is concluding remarks which emphasize that we should treat the problem of farmers' appealing to the higher authorities for help in an all-round manner.