The book "jiang village economy" was introduced to us by our teacher, and it was good (of course, I felt really good after reading it). It's Mr Fei Xiaotong's doctoral thesis. As a paper, due to the limitation of its own genre, there will be more academic content, so it will be boring. In fact, I wasn't interested at first, but after reading two or three chapters, I found it really good. Jiang village economy reflects a large-scale social research by studying a small village, and integrates the author's own experience into the book, which not only increases the credibility of the article, but also improves the readability of the article. And I, after reading it carefully, have gained something and produced some opinions.
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Jiang village economy is a book about the consumption, production, distribution and trade system of farmers in China. This paper describes the economic problems and historical development of a village called Kaixian Gongcun in the Yangtze River Basin. In his book, Mr. Fei Xiaotong made a profound analysis of the development of this village, which gave me a deeper understanding of the present situation of rural areas in China. Moreover, I deeply realized the author's sincere patriotic feelings and enthusiasm for sociology.
geographical environment
Dr. Festus and others believe that it is most appropriate to study rural society in China at this stage. For practical reasons, Mr. Fei Xiaotong limited his investigation to a small social unit-village. Mr. Fei chose Kaixiangong Village, which is located on the southeast bank of Taihu Lake in the Yangtze River Delta. Affected by the summer monsoon, the area is hot and rainy in summer and dry in winter. Most of the year, the climatic conditions are favorable for agricultural production, and the production season lasts for about 300 days. Moreover, "this area is located at the intersection of the Yangtze River and the Grand Canal, connecting this area with the vast territory in the west and north of China". The superior natural environment and convenient transportation were the main reasons why this area gained a dominant position in China's economy at that time.
In this village, land is the main material condition to maintain people's production and life. People can roughly infer the occupation of villagers according to the natural conditions of the land occupied by local people. It happened that all the outsiders in the village were engaged in special occupations. Of course, they have no land.
In addition, Kaixian village, which has traffic advantages, not only develops agriculture, but also its industry, especially silk industry, plays an important role in local rural industry. However, in recent years, under the impact of advanced technology development and market economy, the traditional silk industry in this area has gradually declined.
From this chapter, I learned that the development of a region can not be separated from natural conditions, but also from the whole society or the world. Influenced by the traditional small-scale peasant economy, there is no special place for people to gather for public activities in the planning of the whole village. However, with the social transformation and economic development in China, the internal relations of villages are closely linked, and the establishment of some public institutions is the embodiment of the changes in community life.
social context
In the traditional society of China, "home" is a very important concept. In the long history of China, it played the role of a link, ensuring the continuation of blood relationship and the interdependence of family members. "Home" is actually an extension of the kinship of a "home". The size of "home" is determined by the balance of two opposing forces. One force should unite and the other should disperse. The expansion of kinship caused by these two forces is precisely achieved through in-laws. In this village, marriage is a very formal and strict issue. People here are married in strict accordance with the traditional "parents' orders and matchmakers' words". So there is no proposal here. Children are married by their parents when they are very young, and there is no freedom of marriage. Moreover, people here are used to paying attention to "relatives plus relatives", so the phenomenon of intermarriage between cousins is very common. Because the main function of marriage here is to carry on the family line and promote family development. In such a marriage relationship, the status of both parties is not equal. People have a lot of demands on women and pay too much attention to the issue of "fragrance". This has caused the phenomenon of "little daughter-in-law".
Of course, in family and marriage issues, property inheritance has always been a very important issue. In a village, property is not limited to family property, but also includes village property, extended relatives' property and "non-exclusive property" (www.creditsailing.com). The inheritance of these properties mainly exists in the form of collective possession and private possession. Among the groups with property, family is a basic group and a very important group. In rural families, the main property transferred is land, and the main object is the direct male in the family. If there is no direct male, the family or the elders in the family will inherit him. Of course, heirs also have the obligation to support the elderly. It can be seen that the traditional China has given men high status and rights for the sake of taking responsibility and developing their families, which is a long-standing social problem. With the economic development and ideological emancipation, women's independence is getting stronger and stronger, and these problems have been significantly solved.
In addition to blood relationship, there is also a basic social relationship, that is, regional relationship. In this village, some people form families together. They live, eat and work together. There are also other forms of joint groups.
Economic life
In the daily life of villagers in Kaixiangong Village, culture provides various means to obtain consumption data to meet people's needs, but at the same time it also stipulates and limits people's requirements. Culture has a certain control effect on villagers' consumption.
All the houses in the village are designed with halls. The hall is the largest in the room, and is generally used for work, such as sericulture, silk reeling and threshing. It is also a place where people receive guests or store farm tools, agricultural products and ancestral tablets.
In the village, besides production, people's main activities are gathering, going out and some religious and sacrificial activities.
These details show that the village is mainly engaged in agricultural production, but there are also some sideline businesses. In the process of inheritance and development from generation to generation, the villagers have retained many customs and cultures. These are all important materials for us to study the economic and cultural life in this area.
In the geographical environment, the author once mentioned that because people occupy different land, there are many kinds of occupations. It can be mainly divided into four categories: agriculture, specialized occupations, fisheries and unemployment. However, in any case, the categories of these occupations are not mutually exclusive, and their division is not absolute. From the analysis of people engaged in these occupations, most people use land for agricultural production, but they are not only engaged in agricultural production, but also engaged in other rural industrial production such as silk industry. Some families, such as widows and children, because of the death of adult men, they live not by their own labor, but by renting land.
Climatic conditions are very important in agricultural production. People arrange agricultural production according to the traditional solar terms table and some advanced production technologies. The possession of land promotes the emergence and development of farm workers and small land leasing. This mode of production also makes effective use of labor and land resources, which is beneficial to the development of local economy.
In addition to agricultural production, silk industry is the second largest source of income for residents in this village, which is also the characteristic of farmers in Taihu Lake area. As mentioned earlier, the silk industry declined later, and the local people carried out a series of reforms in this way. In the process of reform, the main forces driving the change are the recession of the world economy, the progress of science and technology and the active participation of some local technical talents. In addition, the government's attention and help also played an important role. Of course, there are also many problems in the reform, such as the dilemma of technological innovation. Mr. Fei Xiaotong also put forward his suggestions for rural economic development: to revitalize the rural economy by introducing scientific production technology and organizing new industries according to the principle of cooperation.
At the end of the book, Mr Fei Xiaotong focuses on the land problem in China. He pointed out that the basic problem in rural areas of China is simply that farmers' income has fallen to a level that is insufficient to maintain the minimum living standard. Farmers' main expenditure is on land use. We should realize that only land reform, rent reduction and average land ownership can not solve the land problem in China. The key to solve the land problem in China should be to increase farmers' income, not to reduce farmers' expenditure. Therefore, Mr Fei Xiaotong reiterated time and again that restoring township enterprises is the fundamental measure to solve the land problem in China.
Jiang village economy, as a work on social issues, profoundly and truly reflects the economic life in rural areas of China, and is a sociological work worth reading.