The Process Of Market-oriented Smallholder Farmers Risk Aversion: The Social Function Of The Spread Of Christianity,

Based on the moral economy of the peasant by American scholar James Scott, this paper took Protestant church of Ningzhen Town in Fujian Province as a"cut-in"point and placed it in the societal context of the marketization in rural areas. It described the interrelations of the peasant, Protestant and the market during the developmental course of the rural marketization. The relations question concerned two topics: the first topic was how the market as a kind of the outside force impacted the mind of the peasant and the rural society, and then how the peasant and the rural society as a kind of inside force coped with the market risk to keep their living space; the second topic was how the rural Protestant took the advantage of its organization and resource as a medi-organization between the market and the peasant, and then gradually made the peasant be in equilibrium with the market. This was the social function of the rural Protestant in the course of rural marketization.Started with this research path, the author presented how the risk hedging of the peasant and the developmental course of the rural Protestant were tied by the process of the marketization in rural areas. The author described the four phases of the rural marketization: the first phase was the revival of the peasant after the land contract relations reform from 1978 to 1985;the second one was the commercial phase, the peasant turn the food produce to mixed farming from 1985 to 1993; the third one was the marketization of the peasant agriculture from 1993 to 2004, after unloosening the price of the produce in 1993; the fourth one was the peasant's market participation extended to the international market since 2004. And then the rural Protestant church exerted the variational social function during the different phases: restarted for the peasant to return collectivity, and then rebuilt for the peasant to cope with market risk, and then searched the inside resource of the church, and finally turned into the Const -ruction of the outside resource from the church. Among the variational social function of the different phase, the author regarded it as a collective mechanism to cope with market risk. In a way, the organizational advantage of church became the continuance and enlargement of the regionally traditional organization.Because of its social function during the rural marketization, the author put his attention to the religionary experience, and put his mostly attention to the collective cooperation and the reciprocal behavior among the believers. The believers'reciprocal behavior was in the produce relations and the life relations, and it also beyond the regional interrelations under organization harmonizer. Compared to the lineage organizations, this reciprocal action had the advantage of organization and social function. This risk hedging strategy took the survival ration of the peasant as the code, and it had definitely historical continuance. It also achieved"the reforger of the tradition"in the situation of the market, and then played new role in the new condition of the marketization. Based on this, the author tried to discover the new relation between the peasant and the market, and the social function analysis of the rural Protestant told us that there might be many developmental spaces of possibility between the peasant and the market. So the fate of the peasant during the rural marketization might have multi- possibilities besides"the end of the peasant"by French sociologist Henri Mendras.