Suburban Land Acquisition And Demolition Of Farmers Collective Petitions Sociological Analysis

Along With the promotion of urbanization and industrialization, the group of suburban peasants confronting with lands expropriation and housing removal has been enlarged in recent years. Although some related resettlement measures and policies had been changed, there were still some shortcomings. This caused the peasants' rights and interests were not protected reasonably. So these peasants' collective appealings to the higher authorities for help occurred frequently.In this papers I focused on three representative suburban peasants' collective petitions in Q district, NANJING and to analyze such social conflicts from the following aspects:the process of conflicts : The causes of the incidents ; the formation of collective petition groups; interactions in the process of these collective petitions; how the collective petitions quelled. In this part, there are some analysis of these collective petitions with details, in order to find the mechanism of this kind of social conflict and how it developed.There are both positive and negative functions of such social conflicts : Outline "the border of the group" which will help the peasants in a weak position to know how to safeguard their own rights; "A early warning device" for the imbalance in the distribution of benefits ; put pressures on the government to adjust the current social policies and some related systems, which will contribute to the maintenance and consolidation of the society; destabilizing factors; disrupt social order; lead to a waste of resource in some degree.With regard to the governance of these petitions, I believe that the mechanism of public Choice should be improved. Vulnerable groups should take more participations in the decision-making process. Further promote the democratization of the government decision-making;Improve the mechanism of democratic supervision and restricting rights ; improve the existing channels for expressing their interests.Dealing with this kind of peasants' collective petition is a comprehensive issue. To protect the interests of these peasants we should also rectify the lands expropriation and housing removal policies , make more efforts to the reform of the social security system ,help the peasants to be real citizens , ease the conflicts, adjust the distribution of benefits ,which will do good to social harmony and long-term development.