Revolution, Resistance, and Reform in Village China

Revolution, Resistance, and Reform in Village China
Author: Edward Friedman
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 595
Release: 2008-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300133235

Drawing on more than a quarter century of field and documentary research in rural North China, this book explores the contested relationship between village and state from the 1960s to the start of the twenty-first century. The authors provide a vivid portrait of how resilient villagers struggle to survive and prosper in the face of state power in two epochs of revolution and reform. Highlighting the importance of intra-rural resistance and rural-urban conflicts to Chinese politics and society in the Great Leap and Cultural Revolution, the authors go on to depict the dynamic changes that have transformed village China in the post-Mao era. This book continues the dramatic story in the authors’ prizewinning Chinese Village, Socialist State. Plumbing previously untapped sources, including interviews, archival materials, village records and unpublished memoirs, diaries and letters, the authors capture the struggles, pains and achievements of villagers across three generations of social upheaval.

Chinese Village, Socialist State

Chinese Village, Socialist State
Author: Edward Friedman
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 386
Release: 1991-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780300054286

This portrait of social change in the North China plain depicts how the world of the Chinese peasant evolved during an era of war and how it in turn shaped the revolutionary process. The book is based on evidence gathered from archives and interviews with villagers and rural officials.

Prosperity's Predicament

Prosperity's Predicament
Author: Isabel Brown Crook
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2013-09-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442225750

This classic in the annals of village studies will be widely read and debated for what it reveals about China's rural dynamics as well as the nature of state power, markets, the military, social relations, and religion. Built on extraordinarily intimate and detailed research in a Sichuan village that Isabel Crook began in 1940, the book provides an unprecedented history of Chinese rural life during the war with Japan. It is an essential resource for all scholars of contemporary China.

China in Revolution

China in Revolution
Author: Mark Selden
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2016-09-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1315286408

Originally published in the early 1970s, The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China has proved to be one of the most significant and enduring books published in the field. In this new critical edition of that seminal work, Mark Selden revisits the central themes therein and reconsiders them in light of major new theoretical and documentary understandings of the Chinese communist revolution.

Village China Under Socialism and Reform

Village China Under Socialism and Reform
Author: Huaiyin Li
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2009-03-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0804771073

Village China Under Socialism and Reform offers a comprehensive account of rural life after the communist revolution, detailing villager involvement in political campaigns since the 1950s, agricultural production under the collective system, family farming and non-agricultural economy in the reform, and everyday life in the family and community. Li's rich examination draws on original documents from local agricultural collectives, newly accessible government archives, and his own fieldwork in Qin village of Jiangsu province to highlight the continuities in rural transformation. Firmly disagreeing with those who claim that recent developments in rural China represent a radical break with pre-reform sociopolitical practices and patterns of production, Li instead draws a clear history connecting the current situation to ecological, social, and institutional changes that have persisted from the collective era.

Agrarian Studies

Agrarian Studies
Author: James C. Scott
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2001-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0300085028

This book presents an account of an intellectual breakthrough in the study of rural society and agriculture. Its ten chapters, selected for their originality and synthesis from the colloquia of the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University, encompass various disciplines, diverse historical periods, and several regions of the world. The contributors' fresh analyses will broaden the perspectives of readers with interests as wide-ranging as rural sociology, environmentalism, political science, history, anthropology, economics, and art history. The ten studies recast and expand what is known about rural society and agrarian issues, examining such topics as poverty, subsistence, cultivation, ecology, justice, art, custom, law, ritual life, cooperation, and state action. Each contribution provides a point of departure for new study, encouraging deeper thinking across disciplinary boundaries and frontiers.

A Social History of Maoist China

A Social History of Maoist China
Author: Felix Wemheuer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2019-03-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107123704

This new social history of Maoist China provides an accessible view of the complex and tumultuous period when China came under Communist rule.

Village China at War

Village China at War
Author: Dagfinn Gatu
Publisher: NIAS Press
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 8776940306

A study on the forging of Chinese communism in the furnace of the anti-Japanese war. It focuses on North China, where the Chinese Communist Party first took root and later expanded to conquer China.

The Unknown Cultural Revolution

The Unknown Cultural Revolution
Author: Dongping Han
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2008-12-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 158367506X

The Unknown Cultural Revolution challenges the established narrative of China’s Cultural Revolution, which assumes that this period of great social upheaval led to economic disaster, the persecution of intellectuals, and senseless violence. Dongping Han offers a powerful account of the dramatic improvements in the living conditions, infrastructure, and agricultural practices of China’s rural population that emerged in this period. Drawing on extensive local interviews and records in rural Jimo County, in Shandong Province, Han shows that the Cultural Revolution helped overthrow local hierarchies, establish participatory democracy and economic planning in the communes, and expand education and public services, especially for the elderly. Han lucidly illustrates how these changes fostered dramatic economic development in rural China. The Unknown Revolution documents a neglected side of China’s Cultural Revolution, demonstrating the potential of mass education and empowerment for radical political and economic transformation. It is a bold and provocative work, which demands the attention not only of students of contemporary Chinese history but of all who are concerned with poverty and inequality in the world today.

Chinese Society

Chinese Society
Author: Elizabeth J. Perry
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 041556073X

This introduction to Chinese society uses the themes of resistance & protest to explore the complexity of life in contemporary China. It draws on perspectives from sociology, anthropology, psychology, history & political science, & covers issues including women, labour, ethnic conflict & suicide.