| The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988 Contributor(s): Huang, Philip C. C. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0804717877 ISBN-13: 9780804717878 Publisher: Stanford University Press OUR PRICE: $63.00 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: January 1990 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Political Science | Public Policy - City Planning & Urban Development |
| Dewey: 307.141 |
| LCCN: 89049546 |
| Lexile Measure: 1360 |
| Physical Information: 421 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: How can we account for the durability of subsistence farming in China despite six centuries of vigorous commercialization from 1350 to 1950 and three decades of collectivization between 1950 to 1980? Why did the Chinese rural economy not undergo the transformation predicted by the classical models of Adam Smith and Karl Marx? In attempting to answer this question, scholars have generally treated commercialization and collectivization as distinct from population increase, the other great rural change of the past six centuries. This book breaks new ground in arguing that in the Yangzi delta, China's most advanced agricultural region, population increase was what drove commercialization and collectivization, even as it was made possible by them. The processes at work, which the author terms involutionary commercialization and involutionary growth, entailed ever-increasing labor input per unit of land, resulting in expanded total output but diminishing marginal returns per workday. In the Ming-Qing period, involution usually meant a switch to more labor-intensive cash crops and low-return household sidelines. |
