A Research On The Clan Force Involved In The Rural Group Events

Being the connecting way of social organization based on blood clan, which endows its members with strong sense of belonging, moral and responsibility, plays an irreplaceable role in today’s rural society and becomes an important force to advance rural society. Especially since the 1980s, the revival of clan force caused great concern of academic circle and all social parts, and the discussions of clan group’s influence had been heard. Meanwhile, with the rural interest disputes and structural imbalance caused by the development of market economy, rural group events emerge one after another, which has brought great challenges for rural governance and even all social harmony and stability.The author finds that the researches of clan’s influence and group action at home and abroad are not unusual, but they are detached and disconnected. While the studies of clan’s influence are usually focused on universal level of the rural governance or the influence of concrete events such as basic-level election, the studies of rural group events are mainly analyzed based on the syllogism of background, reason and measure, and seldom involve the relationship of religion and rural group events.Consequently, this paper takes W village of Linfen in Shanxi Province as an example, selects specific subjects, combines concrete case analysis in the field research and focuses on the role of clan force involves in the group events. The study finds that clan force can not be simply determined to be positive or negative. On the contrary, it shows different participation forms and carries various roles in the rural group events. Therefore, the evaluation criteria with multi-angle and multi-level should be included into the considerations of rural clan force. Apart from that, we should inhibit clan force’s negative influence and plays its representative and cohesive role in the rural collective action, and shows traditional local resources’practical function.