Social Trust In Rural Areas:Loss And Reconstruction

Trust is the basis of interdependence and also is the guarantee of social harmony.But in recent years, trust is lost in varying degrees in the political,social and other fields. The dual structure of urban and rural areas in China leads to a significant difference between urban and rural trust status. Compared to the urban areas,rural society inherited the relationship pattern based on the relation of consanguinity and region.And social trust also inherits some characteristics of traditional social relations.With the outflow of labor force in the rural areas,the village is under the impact of urbanization and modernization,and that brings more distrust to rural society.The general public distrust the strangers for self protection;village cadres and the masses distrust each other due to the asymmetry of resources and information;the path dependence of dispute resolution leads to the dilemma of both desire and fear for the media force.According to the investigation and study of Shuanghekou village, conventional trust in rural society still continues to dominate, but the content of customs and etiquette is different from the feudal society. As the political elites,village cadres are the main source of authority and trust. The villagers play by the modern rules.Accordingly,the role of contracts and laws is not fully played.Due to the low cost of default,the villagers have greater consideration on interests rather than trust no matter dealing with personal matters or collective affairs.The contracts and the laws will only be mentioned when it is in favor of the villagers.The contractual trust is not fully developed in the rural areas.The villages represented by Shuanghekou reconstruct the new social trust system in the confrontation between tradition and modernity.This paper is composed of four chapters:The first chapter mainly introduces the social anthropology research methods and the way of entrance, in order to field observe the change of the rural social trust system.The second chapter is a preliminary sketch on different dimensions of trust including ordinary villagers, village cadres,and the media. The third chapter inspects the development of new contractual trust in the rural society through several contractingtwist of Mashanya reservoir.By telling the hidden contradiction in a country wedding,the fourth chapter mainly illuminates that changes of the ideas and customs lead to the reshaping of the village culture and confrontation between tradition and modernity lead to the evolution of trust system.