2. Chinese Sources

City Research Online City, University of London Institutional Repository Citation: He, R. (1992). Family networks and life in Southeastern China. (Unpublished Doctoral thesis, City University London) This is the accepted version of the paper. This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/7972/ Link to published version: Copyright: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyright holders. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to. Reuse: Copies of full items can be used for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. Provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. City Research Online: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/ [email protected] FAMILY NETWORKS AND LIFE IN SOUTHEASTERN CHINA BY RUIFU HE THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL STUDIES, CITY UNIVERSITY, LONDON EC1V OHB NOVEMBER, 1992 ^,7n 2506246 1 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 3 Declaration 4 Abstract 5 Chapter 1 Introduction 6 Chapter 2 The setting 24 Chapter 3 Fabric of family network 44 Chapter 4 Division, marriage, and kinship in family network 72 Chapter 5 Social interaction in kinship and friendship 95 Chapter 6 Social relationships in economic cooperation 141 Chapter 7 The commercialization of social relationships 164 Chapter 8 Mobilizing support from the family network 186 Chapter 9 Conclusion 217 Bibliography 229 Glossary of Chinese terms 238 2 Acknowledgements The financial support from the SBFSS scholarship is fully acknowledged, without which my study in the U.K. would have been impossible. I also appreciated the grant from the City University, which covered my living expenses during the period of fieldwork in China. For the individual persons I like to thank, the first one is Dr. Stephan Feucht- wang, my supervisor. I thank him for his constant encouragement and invaluable advices throughout the period of my study in City University. Among many teachers and friends who have provided a lot of help and whose help is greatly appreciated, I would like to particularly single out Professor Chen Guoqiang, Mr. Shen Mingshan, and Mr. He Xingzhang. Finally, I would also like to use the opportunity to thank my parents for their constantly emotional support in the past years. 3 Declaration The author grants power of discretion to the University Librarian to allow this thesis to be copied in whole or in part without further reference to him. This permission, however, covers only single copies made for study purposes, subject to normal conditions of acknowledgement. 4 Abstract This thesis examines social relationships and patterns of social interaction in contemporary rural China with a network perspective. Based on first hand data collected in southeastern China by the method of anthropological fieldwork, it tries to understand peasants' social behavior in the context of their concrete, multi- dimensional inter-family relations. This context of relations is called "family network". Family network is defined in this thesis as a quasi group formed by families that is directly linked by kinship and friendship and have frequent social exchange and interaction with the focusing family. It cuts across the boundaries of villages and of kin and non-kin. Throughout the thesis the emphasis is placed on patterns of social interaction in relation to different kinds of social relationship, and on the utilization of these relationships in social and economic life. In explaining people's behavior of supporting others, it is not the notion of group solidarity, but the idea of reciprocity (and mutual exploitation) between both sides of a relationship in the process of social exchange, that is considered as significant. The empirical materials described in this thesis also suggest important changes in patterns of social interaction and the notion of social relationship brought by a rapid economic development in the past ten years. 5 Chapter 1 Introduction Nearly half a century ago, Fei Xiaotong proposed to use cha xu ye ju 1 — a hierarchical structure of social relationships — to describe the character of Chinese society. He stated that the Chinese tended to be egocentric, taking care of themselves first, then their families, then their villages and gangs (parties), and finally their country. In difficult times they were willing to sacrifice others in reverse order. In order to protect themselves, they were prepared to sacrifice their families. In order to protect their families, they were prepared to sacrifice their villages and gangs. And in order to protect their villages and gangs, they were prepared to sacrifice their country (1948: 28). Consequently, the Chinese social structure was "like the concentric circles created by someone throwing a stone into a pond". In the structure, each person was the centre of the concentric circles, and the area of the circles reached was the social influence he had through his social relationships. It changed for the same person in place and time, and for different persons according to wealth and power (24). In this thesis, I intend to adopt this notion and the more recent conception of "social network" in Anthropological and Sociological literature, which elaborates the notion in a more systematical way, to structure the inter-family relations in a rural community in Southeastern China. In line with the theoretical position of network perspective in general anthropology (Mitchell, 1969; Boissevain, 1973), I propose a loosely connected and boundary flexible concept, "family network", to replace the conventional corporate descent group, "lineage" (zong zu), used by Maurice Freed- man (1958, 1966) and many of his followers (e.g. Potter, 1968, 1970; Ahern, 1973; 1 Romanization of all Chinese words and names in this thesis follows the pinyin system, except some cited names of Chinese scholars outside the PRC which are kept as the original to avoid confusion. 6 Cohen, 1970, 1976; Pasternak, 1969, 1972; Watson, 1975; Kuhn, 1970). 2 With the network perspective, and a set of individualistic and interaction-oriented concepts in Chinese society, such as guanxi, laiwang, ganging, renqing, bao, mianzi... etc., I then try to describe patterns of social interaction in these concrete, multi-dimensional inter-family relations within and beyond the boundary of the community. In con- trast to the conventional approach emphasising a priori social structure and its influence on individual's behavior, my attention will be directed to the formation, maintenance and utilization of social relaions in daily life, and to the socio-economic organizations resulted from the daily activities. 1.1 The network perspective Social network analysis in the past decades has been one important expression of a theoretical trend in all social science, particularly in anthropology and sociology, to turn away from concepts implying relatively static cultural patterns and fixed social institutions toward concepts implying change and adaptability. The network metaphors as partial, allusive description of social structure could be seen as early as in Radcliffe-Brown when he wrote in 1940, of the aboriginal Australians, that "direct observation does reveal to us that these human beings are connected by a complex network of social relations. I use the term 'social structure' to denote this network of actually existing relations" (1952: 190). Likewise Fortes referred metaphorically to it in The Web of Kinship Among the Tallensi (1949). However, the use of network as a social perspective and an analytical tool, which emphasizes on independent human beings and the concrete social relations formed by them, has arisen out of the dissatisfaction of a number of anthropologists with the conventional approach stressing culture, rules, belief systems, and collective representation of groups (cf Mitchell, 1969; Boissevain, 1973). This may have its merits when applied to simple, stable and bounded groups such as tribes, but it is found inadequate to cope with the study of rapidly changing complex societies 2Criticisms on lineage theory in the China field have been offered by Claes Hallgren (1979), James L. Watson (1982, 1986), Rubie S. Watson (1985), and many Taiwanese scholars (e.g. Chun, 1984; Chen, 1985). For a critical review of anthropological literature in lineage theory, see Kuper (1982). I share with these authors a view that lineage theory is problematic. It is in any case less applicable now than it was before the fundamental changes that have occurred since 1949. I am concerned here less with those changes than with the current situation. For this, I take a network exchange approach which, though long in anthropological repertoire, is never suggested by anyone of them. 7 in both the western and the third world (Barth, 1966, 1967). It is particularly difficult to deal with social systems in which ties cut across "the framework of bounded institutionalized groups or categories" in complex ways (Barnes, 1969: 72). To study these crosscutting social ties, several anthropologists in the 1950s shifted attention away from cultural systems toward structural systems of concrete ties and networks (e.g., Barnes, 1954; Bott, 1957) and began developing social network concepts more systematically and consciously. These analysts defined a network as a set of ties linking social system members across social categories and bounded groups (Mitchell, 1969). At the time, after World War II, anthropologists began studying what were called "complex societies", especially the massive process of urbanization in which large streams of migrants leaving culturally homogeneous tribes and villages for polyglot cities and industrial areas. They feared that these migrants, in leaving behind the normative guidance of their homelands, would become isolated and disorganized in "mass societies".

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