How Resistance Becomes Possible: A Comparative Study on Political Dynamics of Two Villages under Urbanization

• In Event: 463 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Community Organizing and Mobilization

Abstract

The expansion of centralized state power and its influence on local rural communities is a long-standing concern of scholars and an increasingly important issue as China undergoes state-directed urbanization of the countryside. This article will explore how villagers respond to the urbanization and local government by embracing a more historical and eventful perspective. Based on field study and in-depth interviews, my research focuses on two villages in southwestern China that encountered the “village reforming project” simultaneously, and aims to explain why one village succeed in developing their resistance into collective action, while another village, failing to mount resistance, was demolished. Developing a more historicized and eventful account, this study examines how historical events and local context shape the political dynamics in each village, and how social movements became possible under some circumstances. My analysis shows that while the authority of village leader in one village was maintained by remaining patriarchal tradition, earlier historical conflicts in the other village undermined the creditability of its formal leader, which was further eroded by the penetration of national power into the local village. And this created a power vacuum and facilitated the rise of an alternative leadership that championed the social movement. This study also suggests that rapid urbanization may come at the cost of disintegrating rural communities where an impaired social order and shifting political dynamics provides fertile ground for the growth of social movement against the state.

Author

• Yuan He, University of Michigan