The Relationship Between Land-Lost Farmers and Local Government in China: Integration, Conflict, and Their Interplay

ISBN-13: 9789811027673 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 247 str.

Hongping Lian

Opis

The study is set against the backdrop of the urbanization trend in present-day China, and focuses on the relationship between farmers who have lost their land ("land-lost farmers") and local government.

Spis treści

1 Introduction

1.1 The Topic

1.2 Background: Urbanisation

1.3 The Two Parties under Concern

1.3.1 Land-lost Farmers: The Issue

1.3.2 Local Government: Its Operational Mechanism

1.4 The Conflict

1.4.1 The Development of Conflict

1.4.2 The Interpretation of Conflict

1.5 Research Question

1.6 Methodology

1.7 Outline of the Book   

2 Literature Review and Theoretical Setting

2.1 Conflict Theory

2.1.1 Coser’s Functional Approach to Conflict

2.1.2 Dahrendorf’s Dialectical Approach to Conflict

2.2 Land and Farmers

2.2.1 Land as Property and Life Support System

2.2.2 Marginalisation of the Peasantry

2.3 Land Ownership and Urbanisation

2.3.1 Land Ownership

2.3.2 Urbanisation and Urban Development

2.3.3 Urbanisation and Land Ownership

2.4 Conflictual Relationship between Farmers and Authorities

2.4.1 On the Part of Farmers

Resistance Studies

Farmers’ Resistance

2.4.2 On the Part of Authorities

Authorities’ Response

2.5 Structuration Theory

2.5.1 Social Integration and System Integration

2.5.2 Modalities

2.5.3 Stratification Model of Social Behaviour

2.5.4 Dialectic of Control

2.6 Structurational Relationship between Farmers and Authorities

2.6.1 Within a Structure

2.6.2 Forces of Integration and Conflict

2.6.3 Dynamic Interplay

2.7 Combination of Conflict and Structuration Theories

3 Methodology

3.1 The Objective of the Research

3.2 Research Method

3.3 Outline of the Setting and the Sample

3.3.1 Selection of the Study Sites

3.3.2 Selection of Subjects

3.4 Research Technique<

3.4.1 Basic Questionnaire Survey

3.4.2 Semi-structured Interviews

3.4.3 Participant Observation

3.4.4 Documentary Analysis

3.5 Practice

3.5.1 Material-collecting

My Personal Biography

Getting Access to Respondents: My Powerlessness

Handling My Power

3.5.2 Material-analysing

Realising My power

Handling Power Relations in the Field

Handling Respondent’s Utterances

Ethics Management

3.5.3 Writing-up

Writing Myself into the Data

Writing Style

Manifestation of Reflexivity

3.5.4 Unavoidable Limits

4 Local Setting and Institutional Norms

4.1 The Local Setting

4.2 Institutional Norms

4.2.1 The Role of Norms

Norms as Structuring Mechanisms

Norms as Social Construction

4.2.2 Institutional Space of Urban Development and Land Expropriation

Political System

Legal System

Economic System

4.2.3 Changing Resettlement Approaches and the ‘Issue of Land-lost Farmers’

During the Era of the Planned Economy

Agricultural Relocation

Employment Resettlement

During the Era of the Socialist Market Economy

Monetary Resettlement

Reserve-land Resettlement

4.2.4 Institutional Problems of Land Expropriation

Scope and Justification

Fair Compensation

Inconsistent Levels of Compensation

Farmers’ Rights and Interests

4.2.5 Specific Policy Situation of Changsha

4.2.6 Another Institutional Approach Open to Land-lost Farmers

4.3 Summary and Discussion

5 Interpretations and Situations

5.1 Subjective Interpretations

5.1.1 Land-lost Farmers’ Expression

‘The policies of the central government are good but cannot be properly implemented’

‘We do not know why those people can live so happily’

‘It is unknown for what the money of the collective has been used’

‘We are so desperate as to have to “rebel”’

‘The court does not accept and hear our cases. What the media say is not trustworthy’

5.1.2 Local Government’s Discourse

‘Why are they still not satisfied under the greatly improved circumstances’

‘They have too low educational level to understand policies’

‘The actions of land-lost farmers are morally unjustifiable’

‘We have to assume all blame’

5.1.3 Contrasting Interpretative Schemes

5.2 Objective Situations

5.2.1 Land-lost Farmers’ Plight

Unequal Share of Interests

Urban-Rural Distinction

Social Dislocation

5.2.2 Local Government’s Administrative Logic

Positional Awkwardness

Institutional Pressure Assumed

Economic and Administrative Logic and Dilemma

Predicament of Local Administration

5.2.3 Mutually Constrained Resources

6 Facility of Power: on the Part of Land-lost Farmers

6.1 Possibility for Facility of Power

6.2 Groundwork: Getting Accountable

6.2.1 Familiarity and Practicability

6.2.2 Speaking out, Romanticising, and Spreading Misery

6.2.3 Arming Actions with Legitimacy

6.3 Core Manifestation: Interests-striving Activities

6.3.1 Within Rules

Slippage

Seeking Loopholes

6.3.2 Partial Use, Disregard, and Contravention of Rules

6.3.3 Rationality behind Seemingly Irrational Actions

6.4 Other Manifestation: Ingratiation

6.5 Are the Interests-striving Activities Organised?

6.5.1 General Condition: Internal Disharmony

Indigenous Categorisations

The Activists

The Followers

The Grumblers

The Overcautious

Those Who In Fact See the Local Government’s Position as Justified

Indication as Quasi-groups

6.5.2 Special Case: Unstable Organisation

7 Facility of Power: on the Part of Local Government

7.1 Expanding Rationality

7.2 Officials’ Attitudes

7.2.1 Control and Appeasement

7.2.2 Hierarchical Distribution of Attitudes

7.3 Government Apparatus

7.3.1 Local Personnel

7.3.2 The City’s Institutions

7.3.3 The City’s Changing Policies

7.4 Negotiation

7.4.1 Kaikouzi<

7.4.2 Positively Managing Appeals

7.5 Imposition

7.5.1 Forceful Removal

7.5.2 Badingzi

7.6 Between Negotiation and Imposition

7.6.1 Jiefang

7.6.2 Peifang

7.6.3 Delay

7.7 Capacity for Facility of Power

7.7.1 Structural Approach

7.7.2 Agential Approach

8 Conclusion & Discussion

8.1 Relationship as Integration and Conflict

8.2 Relationship as Process

8.3 Applicability of the Theories Used

8.4 Directions for Further Research

9 Appendices 

9.1 Core Definitions

9.1.1 Land-lost Farmers

9.1.2 Local Government

9.1.3 Appeal / Letters and Visits

9.2 Glossary of Important Chinese Terms

9.3 Context of Appeal System

9.3.1 The Development of Appeal in Traditional China

An Outline

Three Representative Forms of Traditional Appeal

Ji Dengwengu

Yaochejia

Shangbiao

The End of Traditional Appeal in China: Jingkong in the Qing Dynasty

9.3.2 The Cleavage: The Republican Era

9.3.3 The System of Letters and Visits

9.3.4 The Relevance of Contemporary Appeal to Traditional Appeal

9.3.5 The Momentum of Traditional Appeal

9.3.6 The Momentum of Letters and Visits: Between Institution and Consciousness

An Institutional Design

Its Own Legitimacy

Its Comparable Legitimacy

A Conscious Choice

9.3.7 Appraisal of the System of Letters and Visits

Demerits

Merits

O autorze

Hongping Lian is an Associate Professor and Vice Director of the MPA Program at Beijing Normal University’s School of Government, as well as Vice Dean of the University’s Academy of Government. She received her PhD from the University of Aberdeen, UK, and pursued postdoctoral research at the Department of Policy, City University of Hong Kong. Her primary areas of scholarship are political sociology and land policy. She has co-published a monograph – The China Well-Being (Minsheng) Development Report (2012) – in English, and has published over 10 articles in key journals such as World Development and Journal of Youth Studies. She has been involved in several projects, including one National Social Science Project. Several annual research reports she has spearheaded have received considerable attention from national leaders including Premier Li Keqiang.

Blurb

The study is set against the backdrop of the urbanization trend in present-day China, and focuses on the relationship between farmers who have lost their land (“land-lost farmers”) and local government. Particularly, it applies the extended case method to answer the following two questions: first, in what ways do the forces of integration and conflict manifest themselves in the relationship between land-lost farmers and local government? Second, how do land-lost farmers and local government apply respective modalities in the context of their interplay? The main finding is that the two groups, land-lost farmers and officials, are engaged in a complex and dynamic relationship. That relationship is played out locally within a network of power-interest structures, which not only manifests itself as forces of integration and conflict, but also as an ongoing process, a game played by knowledgeable agents, whose strategies are enacted, and in so doing, both reproduce that game and alter it. Readers will gain an ethnographic understanding of the relationship based on an in-depth examination of perspectives on both sides of the equation.