The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988How 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. In post-revolutionary China, it typically meant greatly intensified crop production. Stagnant or declining returns per workday were absorbed first by the family production unit and then by the collective. The true significance of the 1980's reforms, the author argues, lies in the diversion of labour from farming to rural industries and profitable sidelines and the first increases for centuries in productivity and income per workday. With these changes have come a measure of rural prosperity and the genuine possibility of transformative rural development. By reconstructing Ming-Qing agricultural history and drawing on twentieth-century ethnographic data and his own field investigations, the author brings his large themes down to the level of individual peasant households. Like his acclaimed The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China (1985), this study is noteworthy for both its empirical richness and its theoretical sweep, but it goes well beyond the earlier work in its inter-regional comparisons and its use of the pre- and post-1949 periods to illuminate each other. |
Contents
A Socioeconomic Profiles of Eight Yangzi Delta Villages | 337 |
Cultivated Acreage Per Capita in Songjiang and Suzhou | 342 |
E The Changing Composition of Gross Output Value in Huayang | 354 |
Introduction I | i |
TO 1949 | ix |
and Rural China 354 F Incomes of Collective Joint and Private | x |
The Yangzi Delta Ecosystem 21 | 21 |
Commercialization and Family Production 44 | 44 |
Restructuring the Old Political Economy 165 | 165 |
Collective Family and Sideline Production 199 | 199 |
Growth Versus Development in Agriculture 222 | 222 |
Rural Industrialization 252 | 252 |
Capitalism Versus Socialism in Rural Development 266 | 266 |
PeasantWorker Villages 288 | 288 |
A Summing Up 305 | 305 |
Some Speculations 325 | 325 |
Commercialization and Managerial Agriculture 58 | 58 |
Commercialization and Involutionary Growth 77 | 77 |
Peasants and Markets 93 | 93 |
Imperialism Urban Development and Rural Involution 115 | 115 |
Two Kinds of Village Communities 144 | 144 |
Eight Yangzi Delta Villages 338 | 338 |
Composition of Gross Value of Output of Huayang Commune | 355 |
The Village Informants 370 Sources Cited 372 | 372 |
Character List 391 | 391 |
407 | |
Other editions - View all
The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988 Philip C. Huang Limited preview - 1990 |
The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988 Philip C. Huang No preview available - 1990 |
Common terms and phrases
acreage administrative village average Baoshan brigade cadres capitalism capitalist catties century Changshu Chayanov Chinese cloth collective collectivization commercialization commodities cotton cultivation countryside crop production cultivated area enterprises factory family farm farmwork fertilizer gazetteer grain Hamlet handicraft harvest Hebei hired labor Huang Huayang Huayangqiao Huayangqiao villages imperial income increased involution involutionary irrigation Jiading Jiangsu Jiaxing Lake Tai landlords managerial agriculture managerial farms Ming and Qing modern mulberries Nanhui Nantong nongye North China plain output peasant peasant economy peasant household percent population prefecture Qing rent River rural industrialization sericulture Shajing Shandong Shanghai Shen sidelines silk silkworms social Songjiang Songjiang county surplus Suzhou Table Taicang team head tion towns trade urban wage water control weaving wheat women workday workers workpoints Wu Chengming Wujiang Wuxi Wuyue xian zhi xiang Xiaofa Xilihangbang Xubushanqiao Xuejiada Yangzi delta yarn yuan Zhang Zhejiang Zhongguo