Research On Changes Of Rural Cooperative Economic Organization(1949-2009)

Research on the changes of rural cooperative economic organizations faces a double dilemma that the role of rural cooperative economic organizations in sociology or modernization isn’t definite and the materials about the changes of rural cooperatives economic organizations isn’t taken fully, which make it historic and difficult. Concerning about the peasant fates and rural development, I attempt to analyze the history and current situation of China rural cooperative economic organizations, analyze the features and factors of continuous development of China rural cooperative economic organizations from 1949 to 2009 in a village of Hubei province.Rural cooperative economic organization is the organization continuum of "quasi-organizations grass-roots organizations-the formal organization" which is set by farmers on the voluntary, equality, mutual benefit and mutual values in the economic field. Quasi-organization is a mutual co-operation action among peasants; Grass-roots organizations are the economic self-help organizations in civil society; Formal organization refers to officially recognized cooperative organizations. Such as Mutual aid action (teams), Elementary cooperatives, High cooperatives, Supply and marketing cooperatives, Credit unions, Professional associations, Production cooperatives etc.In the redistribution period, informal peasant cooperation and non-governmental mutual aid action were replaced by formal and governmental cooperative institutions gradually. Particularly in the production field, from Mutual Aid Teams to Elementary Cooperative, then, from High Cooperative to People’s Communes, the qualities of peasant cooperation were alienated step by step; at last, the voluntary mutual aid action of peasant cooperation became helpless collective work under the leadership of the nation. The civil spontaneous cooperation only limited in the living field by neighbor-hood mutual-aids and less in amount.In this period, the rural cooperative economic organizations play an important role in the national strategy to achieve the socialist transformation of agriculture, became synonymous with collectivism in the field of ideology, and turn out to be the peasants’ shelter and ways out of poverty, which made the rapid escalation of rural cooperative economic organizations.In the transformation period, neighbor-hood mutual-aid action as social exchange resumed at the initial of the reform. But with the deepening of the reform and the broadening of market, market exchange instead of most neighbor-hood mutual-aid. The cooperation which offer public goods and act as collective action were difficult to achieve and became less, for the national force’s secession and the shortage of organizational resource. However, since the vast area and the variation of village circumstances and "local knowledge", there are many examples of peasant cooperation in the village, such as the new peasant professional economic cooperation organization, and peasant association. As a whole, rural cooperative economic organizations had these changes because of the political, economic, cultural, and farmers tended to be rational and utilitarianism.In the period of new rural rebuilding, rural cooperative economic organizations emerged from the diversification to the characteristics of formal and standardized, Quasi-organization of traditional mutual cooperation based on the primary group showed a decline trend. The cooperative action taking "tough weapons" to protect the economic interests begin to emerge. Grass-roots organizations gradually became legitimated. The main reason for these changes were that rural cooperative economic organizations play the role of provider of public goods in the country’s new political actor, became an important role in co-integration mode in the agricultural industry to connect with farmers and businesses, and turn to be a platform which farmers could use to protect the legal economic interests. This triple identity and the cooperation principles to achieve an adhesive identification was the driving force to changes of rural cooperative economic organizations.We placed our study on changes of rural cooperative economic organizations in the theory framework "organization-society". Organizations are embedded in the social structural on economics, politics, culture and laws. But these "embeddedness" are not passive restraints. Organizations can take actions by heterogeneous roles of different social structure. The dynamics of the changes of rural cooperative economic organizations stems from superposition recognition between its multiple identities and cooperation principles, that is to say, rural cooperative economic organizations got multiple identities without losing the unique characteristics of the principles of cooperation. In order to break through the plight of the limited information about the changes of rural cooperative economic organizations, we try to seeking common law methodology and different law methodology coexisted, persisting qualitative research and quantitative research combined, taking the technical literature, investigation, case study and oral history confirmed.Through research on changes of rural cooperative economic organizations from the 1949 to 2009,we found rural cooperative economic organization has gone through the principle of cooperation superimposed by the ideological and utilitarian logic, and was being hoped to return to the principles of cooperation in the future.