Farmers’ Cooperation In Three Social Networks Perspectives

Since the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Farmers’ Professional Cooperatives came into force, farmers’ cooperatives have obtained the legitimacy and developed quickly. But during their development, various problems occurred, which has violated the original intention of their establishment in a sense. First, the number of farmers’ cooperatives and admitted farmers in China remained low and many farmers were not members; second, most farmers’ cooperatives did not operate and some even evolved into enterprises, generating lots of "faked cooperatives" and "eviscerated cooperatives". Study farmers’ cooperative behavior and the factors that influence their cooperation would help farmers to join in the real cooperation.This thesis applies a social network perspective. Based on the nodes property and their resource property in the networks subsystems, the networks of rural communities are divided into political, economic and social sub-networks. It is shown in this thesis that first, due to the changes of rural social environment, the social networks are diversified without a dominant one; second, due to the imperfect villager autonomy system, the political sub-networks in rural communities, which are based on village organizations, still have the exogenous and vertical characteristics of the layered network, unable to change into endogenous and horizontal ones; third, in rural communities, the economic sub-networks are the most dynamic ones that have the most potential to expand. But simply relying on economic sub-networks, bonded by capitals, farmers often establish enterprises with the objectives of maximizing profits and pursuing higher economic efficiency; fourth, factors such as belief, mission, the spirit of the law and contract, compliance with regulations, which are necessary in the establishment and operation of farmers’ cooperatives could be generated by the political and social sub-networks of rural communities, not by following the market logics; fifth, though many cooperatives have been established in rural communities, the ones that could operate and realize the "second dividend" are rare. This is because social and political sub-networks could not make up the deficiency of the economic sub-networks so that many "faked cooperatives" have appeared. Moreover, the political sub-networks have the vertical characteristic. Due to the bureaucracy, village organizations decrease their efficiency and lack the motivation to guide the cooperatives’operation. Thus many cooperatives have gradually fallen into "eviscerated cooperatives".