Rural Reconstruction Movement
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Reconstructing the Rural: Peasant Organizations in a Chinese Movement for Alternative Development Matthew A. Hale A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2013 Reading Committee: Ann Anagnost, Chair Stevan Harrell Alexander Day Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Anthropology University of Washington Abstract Reconstructing the Rural: Peasant Organizations in a Chinese Movement for Alternative Development Matthew A. Hale Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Ann Anagnost, Anthropology This ethnography examines four peasant organizations affiliated with New Rural Reconstruction (NRR), an ongoing alternative development movement in China. NRR consists of a diverse network involving hundreds of organizations, loosely united by the goals of reversing the rural-to-urban flow of resources and “(re)constructing” sustainable, self-sufficient communities based on cooperation among peasant households, supported by agroecological skill-sharing and alternative marketing. While many NRR advocates draw ideas and inspiration from China’s Rural Reconstruction Movement of the 1930s, the movement is better understood as a Chinese and postsocialist counterpart to the global wave of responses to neoliberalism associated with the Global Justice Movement (GJM). Both NRR and the GJM could be characterized as predominantly alternativist in their focus on fostering “alternative” economic forms (neither capitalist nor socialist), such as co-ops and “fair trade” networks. Another commonality with NRR is the GJM’s revival of “the peasantry” as a central political subject. In contrast with mid-20th century Third Worldism, NRR and the GJM represent the peasantry as primarily oriented not toward modernization, but the defense or revival of traditional lifeways i now valued as more sustainable than either capitalist or socialist models of industrial development. I argue that, under present conditions, “success” at reversing the rural-to-urban flow of resources through commercial means tends to require further integration into capitalist processes, both increasing vulnerability to global economic forces and undermining values such as equality, sustainability, and participatory democracy. On the other hand, these values continue to distinguish NRR-affiliated organizations from conventional capitalist enterprises, creating tensions that point toward possibilities of confrontation with their broader social conditions. I thus engage critically with economic anthropology and the interdisciplinary literature on alternative economic forms, peasant cooperation, “culture,” and “value(s).” Drawing on a critical return to Marx in light of the failures of 20th century Marxisms, I introduce the concept of “alternativism” and a focus on the tension between alternative values and the capitalist form of commodity value. These innovations contribute to anthropological theory by providing tools for dealing with the post-1960s “epistemic impasse” of global political thought and the post-1990s situation, in which capital seems to be excluding an increasing portion of the peasant and semi- proletarian bodies it continues to dispossess from complete integration into wage relations, which Marx had seen as the fulcrum of capitalist society’s self-overcoming. ii Table of Contents Page Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………..….…..v Unit Conversions…………………………………………………………………………….....vii Preface……………………………………………………………………………………….…..1 Introduction: Overview of This Project and Chapter Summary…………………………….…..3 Part I: New Rural Reconstruction and Alternative Social Relations Chapter 1: Alternative Economic Forms and Peasant Cooperation……………………14 Chapter 2: Theory and History of New Rural Reconstruction…………………………29 Chapter 3: Chinese Peasants and the Politics of Value………………………………...70 Part II: Case Studies of Peasant Organization in NRR Chapter 4: Wansheng Co-op, Anhui………………………………………………….114 Chapter 5: Raoling Co-op, Shanxi…………………………………………………....158 Chapter 6: Liao Flats, Sichuan………………………………………………………..211 Chapter 7: Peppercorn Village, Guizhou……………………………………………..253 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………....282 Endnotes……………………………………………………………………………………...288 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………….306 iii Acknowledgments I dedicate this dissertation to my mom and dad, Linda Castle and J. Gregory Hale, for the immeasurable support and love you have provided throughout my life, without which this never would have been possible. I extend special thanks to my friends in the New Rural Reconstruction movement for your hospitality and for sharing your lives and work with me. You are too many to list here, and I do not want to risk offending some by naming others. I hope that this dissertation has only positive influences on your lives and projects. I would like to thank my mentors Ann Anagnost, Stevan Harrell, and Alexander Day for their guidance leading up to and throughout the research and writing processes. Few students are fortunate enough to have such an attentive and helpful committee. I would also like to thank Jasmine Zhang for inspiration in this project and in life, help with research, suggestions on the writing, and patience; Peng Yinghao for help with research, hospitality, friendship, and ideas; He Siying for companionship and support throughout most of the research; Chang Tianle for hospitality, good food, and brutal honesty; Terry Narcissan for compassion at a crucial moment; Wang Juan for help with research, hospitality, and forgiveness; Christof Lammer for sharing his research, introducing me to the concept of “solidarity economy,” and commenting on the writing; He Yufei for help with research, thinking through it with me, and commenting on the writing; Jennifer Tippins for sharing her research, explaining settlement patterns, and sushi nights; Shayan Momin for sharing his research and helping me think through some of the issues; Trang Ta for hospitality and encouragement; Fan Jun, Gong Zhiwen, Ju Zheng and Savina Choi for help with research and ideas; Hairong Yan for inspiration, inviting iv me to a conference that convinced me to resume this project, and commenting on the writing; Pun Ngai for being a role model and providing guidance at an early stage; Mindi Schneider, Ralf Ruckus, Yiching Wu, Jonathan Lassen, Li Derui, Ge Jian, Joseph Kurina, and Phillip Neel for friendship and ideas that influenced this project. I take full responsibility for any inaccuracies in this dissertation. The research was funded by a University of Washington China Studies grant for pre- dissertation research (summer 2006), a Fulbright-Hays grant for Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (December 2009-November 2010), an Association for Asian Studies grant for short research travel (summer 2012). Much of the material from my Dialectical Anthropology article (Hale 2013) has been interspersed throughout this dissertation, in thoroughly reworked form. v Unit Conversions 1 Chinese yuan = 0.16 US dollar (as of April 2013) 1 Chinese yuan = 0.12 US dollar (as of April 2000) 1 mu = 1/6 acre = 1/15 hectare vi Preface Body under a thatched roof, Eyes on the planet; Feet in the mud, Mind on the world’s affairs. — Dong Jiageng, 19611 One hot summer day in 2010, this poem was shared with me by an elderly farmer called Auntie Wu in the Sichuan village of Liao Flats (discussed in Chapter 6).2 She could not remember where she learned it – “perhaps in school,” but she would have completed the little schooling she had by the time this poem was written. It came to her mind one afternoon as we were pulling weeds and discussing how the small but influential organic farming project, in which she and her family played a prominent role, had connected them and many other Chinese peasants to activists from all over the world through shared concerns about global issues such as climate change, economic crisis, and the possibilities of more sustainable and dignified ways of life. Later I noticed that her version of the poem differed slightly from the 1961 original, mainly in her substitution of the last line, “Heart/mind caring about the world’s affairs” (心怀天 下), with “Heart/mind worried about the world’s affairs” (心忧天下). This is a subtle and probably insignificant difference, but I point it out in order to highlight the general decline in optimism between the 1960s and the early 21st century – a decline I associate with what some 1 have called the global post-1960s “epistemic impasse” characterized by the “unraveling of historico-political categories,”3 the “depoliticization of politics,”4 postmodernity, and catastrophism,5 in which it is now “easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.”6 This dissertation reflects such a decline in optimism, along with the desire to critique something like what Lauren Berlant (2011) calls the “cruel optimism” of the post-1980s era: “a relation of attachment to compromised conditions of possibility” – a sort of dysfunctional adaptation to capitalism’s increasing socioecological precarity, in which “the object that draws your attachment” (fantasies of “the good life” as well as certain modes of political commitment) “actively impedes the aim that brought you to it,” leading to “the attrition or wearing out of the subject.” I would apply this term to certain tendencies on the global and Chinese left examined in this dissertation, which seem committed to wearing themselves out by repeating the mistakes of the past century, attempting to act in ways that