Traditional And Rational

Since the 1990s, the growing collective appeals by peasants to the higher authorities have gained increasing attention from the academic circle. In accordance with the theory "Put ourselves in the position of peasants" held by Cao Jinqing, this thesis mainly adopts the "devotion verstehen" approach by Max Weber, which tries to put the author in the position of villagers who make collective appeals, and tries to communicate with respondents in the way of "emotion transfer" and provokes the villagers to recall the scene of collective appeals which happened before by means of random interviews. The author first of all reviews some relevant works on peasants' revolt abroad, some research results on agriculture society and peasant's collective appeal in China. In the body of this thesis, it adopts the analysis strategy and the writing logic of "Process-Events" and presents the dynamic process of the appeals villagers in Sanjing. The background of the appeal, the farce preceding the appeal and a seemingly open end are introduced respectively. It also analyzes the collective appeals made by villagers in Sanjing with folk culture with an aim of discovering the collective appeals in the eyes of farmers. In the part of "Conclusion and Thought", the analysis of "tradition in the form" and of "rationality in the essence" in this appeal are made respectively. The conclusion is that the action of the farmers is traditional but rational in the context of present China. It is true that this thesis reflects the new mindset centering on farmers—"Farmers' views on group appeals and my view on farmers' group appeals." This is manifested in the whole thesis from the survey, the analysis to the conclusion, which is also the author's new accomplishment based on the previous studies.