An empirical research on gambling in Chinese rural societies during the transformation period

: Case study of A village in Hubei province

Abstract

　　　Concerning the Chinese rural society is in the transformation period,　some people indicate that it is sinking and degenerating, while some argue that it is declining and disappearing. As I observed and researched, the social structure that is established on the basis of cultivation culture is truly collapsing and being replaced by a complex and chaotic structure. Individual behavior logic in rural society is shifting from acquaintance-society principle to semi-acquaintance-society and anonymous-society principle as agricultural civilization and industrial and commercial civilization are performing a kind of game in Chinese countryside. Villages have gradually lost their original cultural cohesion, and replaced by a state of disunity. What I am worried about is not its external decline and decadence but the disappearance of its cultural atmosphere and positive spirits. This thesis adopts the approach of meticulous fieldwork, which is a common research method in sociology and anthropology. The thesis focuses on the phenomenon that gambling is prevailing in a depressed countryside, a summarization and conclusion of the features of the phenomenon to make a deep analysis in it`s inside social mentality and social fabric through the investigation and study of the phenomenon. In the end, this thesis presents some unique standpoints on the longtime top-down village construction mode as well as the rural society’s dependence on superior government, which developed under this mode.