The Research On The Social Assistance Field Of The Pauper Factory In Tianjin During The Republic Of China

The pauper factory is a new social assistance organization that emerged in the process from tradition to modernity during the Republic of China, which intended to help the groups who live on the edge of society(Marginal Groups), through providing subsidy and skill training. The emergence and development process of the pauper factory show the tortuous course of Chinese modernization. In this dissertation, we discuss the process of social assistance field separated preliminarily from the political field and thought's field in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic period. Then we focus on the representative practice of social assistance field——Tianjin pauper factory, and explore its development at different periods. Through the changes of the actor's habitus,we sketch the constructive process of social assistance field, and depict concretely the differentiation of social structure and function in the tide of national modernizationThis dissertation found that the government still continue the traditional discipline habitus at the beginning of the formation of social assistance field, and it gradually changed into responsibility habitus with the development of modernization. Since 1937, the dissimilation occurs in the social assistance field. In spite of the Anti-Japanese War broke the Chinese original modernization, the new modernization elements made the habitus of the Kuomintang government further transform to responsibility habitus. Subsequently, this responsibility habitus penetrated into the design of asylum after the Anti-Japanese War. Owing to the social reality of the war and inflation, the practice couldn't keep up with the pace of advanced concept.As the important driving force of modernization and central actors of the social assistance field, the chamber of commerce and local elites participate in the pauper factory construction in different ways with the changes of the political field, and the development of themselves at different periods. They behaved as dominant force and filled up the lack of national power in the social assistance field at the beginning of the Republic. Then they transformed into indirect participation, as a result of newly established the Kuomintang government was eager to withdraw the political authority in all areas. In the period of Japan-occupied, they were involved as collaborator. After 1945, due to the chamber of commerce decline and the Kuomintang political coerced, they unable to participate in the construction of the pauper factory.