The Influence Of Hollowness And Commercialization On Village Autonomy

Migrant working increases the income of villagers and at the same time creates some negative impact on the villagers'autonomy. The village has the tendency of "hollowness" During working outside, villagers find the value of labor, so they tend to reduce to help each other, and the relationship between the villagers tend to be "commercialization".The current study only focus on the macro aspects of Village autonomy and ignore the situation within the village,also they ignore the village social capital's role in village self-government. In this paper,we choose a remote village in Shandong Province called Mine Village which has the typical of "hollowness" and "commercialization" as a case study to discuss the impact on Village autonomy from "hollowness" and "commercialization".Social network, trust, and common structural rules constitute the traditional social capital in the village. Social capital is the important basis for Villager autonomy. In Pearl Village we find that "hollowness" and "commercialization" working together leads to the collapse of traditional social capital. They expand and loose the traditional social networks of the village; the villages reduce mutual trust and fail to abide by the internal standard. Traditional "Acquaintances Society" seems to be "semi-Acquaintances Society". The collapse of traditional social capital affects the collective action of villagers, the fully rational individual actions of the villagers created the collective irrationality, the cooperation between villagers is difficult. For the Lack of collective resources and no external resources to support, the village can not effectively produce public goods.Village autonomy lose the support of internal resources because of the collapse of traditional social capital.Outside environmental faced by village cadres have also changed during the collapse of social capital.such as, the stronger control from township government. First, tax reform, the functions of village cadre was changed after the rural tax and fee reform, the interests community which was composed by village cadres and township government is broken, the villagers strengthen the awareness to protect their rights and the authority of village cadres is weak; the control from township government is stronger and the authority of the village cadres is limited. Changes from both internal and external environmental have affected the enthusiasm of the village cadres, As the result of the lack of internal resources and insufficient incentives for village leaders,Village autonomy is like a mere formality.The basic conclusions and recommendations of this paper are:(1) The traditional social capital can promote collective action to improve the welfare of the villagers. (2) "Hollowness" and "commercialization" lead to the collapse of traditional social capital, collective action is difficult and it will affect the conduct of village autonomy in turn. (3) Village autonomy need the involvement of national administrative power to integrate the traditional social capital and establish the new social capital, the Village autonomy will walk up to real democracy during the process in building the new social capital.