| China is undergoing tremendous social and economic transformations with different local innovations and variations. This dissertation compares and contrasts three industrial villages in China demonstrating different mixes along the organizational continuum from market economy to collectivism. While Nanjie Village, located in central China, is striving to build an industrialized communist heaven, Huaxi Village, near Shanghai, enhances its own collectivism with a modern shareholding system. Shangyuan Village in southern China, on the other hand, revives its tradition of family business, by adding a collective welfare system to its booming private economy. Using this comparison, the dissertation attempts to answer the following questions: (a) How do local communities interact with the state and local political structures in the transition from state socialism to a market economy? (b) During rural industrialization, or the transformation from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft, how do local people make sense of their lives and maintain their identities? (c) What factors influence people's selection of their path to development? It also aims to bridge the theoretical gaps between economic sociology and social change by combining macro-level, historical-comparative analysis with the examination of micro-level daily interactions, thus bringing the state and culture back into the study of economic phenomena. Data in the dissertation are based on surveys and extensive interviews with villagers, local officials, and migrant workers. This is supplemented by ethnographic observations of important meetings and activities, supported by archive documents, newspaper stories, and scholarship relevant to the analysis. The thesis concludes that the multiple strategies available to the Chinese economy have relevance not only to the future of the modern "Workshop of the World" but also to the development options confronting the global world economy. |
