Abstract
This report aims to clarify the process of cooperativity among villagers. Specifically, it analyzes the case of “Village X” of Shandong Province in China, as it was forced to relocate under the farming village urbanization policy. Using this case example, I examine the possibility for village autonomy in China.
Previous studies on Chinese rural communities focused on comparisons with Japanese villages, suggesting community (i.e., cooperativity focusing mainly on cooperative labor organization) did not exist in Chinese villages. Community was often considered a congestion of “myself” and “individual” based on “the pattern of difference sequence,” even if cooperativity was evident.
In this report, those whose villages were about to disappear increased their sense of cooperativity based on “public village matters,” even suppressing their personal interests during the confluence of interests. Such a realization was possible because each villager, as a village member, increased his or her membership awareness using an organizational approach in anticipation of the village's disappearance; additionally, villagers mutually acknowledged that such an approach was based on public village matters, which trumped personal interests.
In the case of an emergency with a sense of impending crisis, such as the village's disappearance, it became clear that cooperativity in the farming village of China is based on a different principle under normal circumstances. In rural areas in China, there are large-scale national development programs, such as the farming village urbanization policy, that are continuously implemented, making it easy for villagers to be conscious of village crises and village autonomy.
