Research On The Rural Funeral Mutual Aid Organizations During The Republic Of China

Local mutual aid have a long history, there have a variety of the mutual aid organizations in early Republic of China’s rural community. The wedding and funeral mutual aid is one of widespread organization which we pay little attention.Based on the interpersonal in rural society, this paper is to analyze the emergence and development history of the wedding and funeral mutual aid organization. The development of folk mutual aid is affected by traditional culture and official political propaganda.Background by the special historic environment of the Republic, the paper analyzed the main manifestations of the wedding and funeral mutual aid. According to the rural society tradition, this paper analyzed the running logic of this kind aid organization and find out the operating characteristics in this society of acquaintances. The modern history of China is under the process of the disintegration of traditional society and approach to the West.This paper is trying to find out the changes of the mutual aid organization’s form under this process. Take shouyu for example,the paper present the emergence and development history of this new mutual aid organization and investigate the historic reasons of it’s evolution. The paper evaluated value of the wedding and funeral mutual aid organization and highly commended it’s positive affection in traditional society.The discussion of the wedding and funeral mutual aid shows that this organization produced in a society of acquaintances and it’s specific operation present a feature of small-scale acquaintances credit. Contrast to the shouyuan, small organizations have natural advantages in traditional acquaintances society. Because of this advantage, the wedding and funeral mutual aid organization and other mutual aid organizations are still exist in grass-roots society. But what can’t be ignored is the defect of this mutual aid credit formed in rural society spontaneously which manifested in the unofficially limited the development of itself.