| Agrarian Radicalism in China, 1968-1981 Contributor(s): Zweig, David (Author) |
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ISBN: 0674011759 ISBN-13: 9780674011755 Publisher: Harvard University Press OUR PRICE: $66.83 Product Type: Hardcover Published: April 1989 Annotation: This book, an outgrowth of that study, also addresses the broader issue of popular resistance to state-directed social change and efforts of postrevolutionary regimes to reassert control over society in order to continue socioecomonic and political transformations. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social - Political Science |
| Dewey: 306.095 |
| LCCN: 88021261 |
| Series: Harvard East Asian |
| Physical Information: 1.04" H x 6.49" W x 9.51" (1.36 lbs) 269 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: During and after the Cultural Revolution, radical leaders in the Chinese Communist Party tried to mobilize rural society for socioeconomic and political changes and move rural China to even higher stages of collectivism. David Zweig argues that because advocates of agrarian radicalism formed a minority group within China's central leadership, they acted in opposition to the dominant moderate forces and resorted to alternative strategies to mobilize support for their unofficial policies. The limited institutionalization of the system allowed the radicals to promote their principles through policy winds, speeches generated by newspaper articles, networks of political allies, and organized visits; they also linked their policies to ongoing political and economic campaigns. In spite of this radical ideology and frequent upheavals in the countryside, Zweig finds that Chinese peasants had no ideological affinity for Mao's theory of the continuing revolution and reacted to each policy change on the basis of how it affected their personal, family, or collective interests. Despite intense propaganda, cadres adjusted the impact of these radical policies so that the peasants' conservative mindset, entrepreneurial spirit, and desire to improve their own lot remained intact.Zweig examines the local realities of the radicals' program by describing the results of specific policies; he discriminates among the responses of officials at different bureaucratic levels, peasants of varying income levels and family structures, and villages with specific geographic and socioeconomic characteristics. He draws on his own field research in Chinese villages and interviews with Chinese college students and their friends who had lived in the countryside and emigres in Hong Kong who had lived and worked in rural China. |