Mobilization And Participation: Construction Practice And Exploration Of CPC Peasant Association In Early Years Of Foundation

Shanghai Suburbs Peasant Association was an organizational system of peasant associations built under the leadership of Shanghai suburban working committee in the early years of New China's foundation, which included municipal peasant associations, district-level peasant associations, township-level peasant associations and village-level peasant associations. It existed from 1950 to 1954. The paper, based on summarizing the relevant previous studies and using the files of Shanghai Archives and materials of Shanghai Library, is attempted to make a dynamic and panoramic description of Shanghai Suburbs Peasant Association. Moreover, it will describe and analyze CPC's mobilizing practice and the behavior and psychology of the farmers participating the peasant associations from the angle of "mobilization - -participation". Including the introduction and conclusion, the paper is divided into four chapters to research Shanghai Suburbs Peasant Association.The introduction reviews the present research situation of the peasant associations, introduces the existing research results and insufficiency, makes theresearch significance clear and defines the main concepts ------"Shanghai suburbs"and "Shanghai Suburbs Peasant Association".The first chapter is about construction theory and practice of CPC Peasant Association. It introduces the characteristic of China traditional farmers' participating in politics and reviews CPC's construction theory and practice in organizing peasant associations from the beginning of CPC to early years of China's foundation.The second chapter is on the general situation of Shanghai Suburbs Peasant Association under the leadership of CPC. It analyzes the historical evolution of Shanghai Suburbs Peasant Association from three aspects, namely: the establishing order of Shanghai Suburbs Peasant Association, the development of Shanghai Suburbs Peasant Association and the canceling reason of Shanghai Suburbs Peasant Association. Moreover, in this part, there is an introduction about the organizational constitution and function of Shanghai Suburbs Peasant Association, which mainly manifests in three aspects: the political function, the economic function and the social function.The third chapter introduces the CPC's concrete practice of mobilizing fanners to attend the peasant associations. At first, it introduces the concrete policy of CPC's mobilizing, which is from "closed-doorism" to "mobilize the masses with a bold hand", and then summaries the CPC's concrete mobilizing practice, mainly including: calling kinds of conferences, training and discovering models (including individual models and unit models), using popular media, posters and slogans.The fourth chapter describes behavior and psychology of Shanghai suburbs farmers' participating in peasant associations. This chapter analyzes the characteristic of Shanghai suburbs farmer groups before and after Shanghai liberation: professional type is diverse, social structure is complex, thought of valuing industry and business but despising agriculture is serious, level of cultural education is low, etc. In the following part, there is the dissertation about types of farmers' participating in the peasant associations: participating in peasant associations initiatively, participating in peasant associations negatively, participating in peasant associations by mobilization, as well as analyzing famers' probable mentality and its reason of each participating type. At last, it makes a brief summary on the relationship among these three participating types and finding that these three participating types are not independent. In fact, there is a dynamic relationship between them and they can transform mutually.The conclusion indicates the real enlightenment of this study. The development and localization of peasant mass organization under modern governmental system should be considered as follow: the farmer mass organization should be the ones that farmers get together voluntarily; it must represent the farmers' interests; it is an important prop of CPC's basic level regime construction.