State Control and Rural Society in the 1950s as seen thorugh the conscription system - Focusing on 「Samgye-diary」 -

In the mid-20th Century, the practice of bartering was one of the most prevalent forms of economic transaction around the Indonesian Archipelago. The most prevalent and crucial for Indonesian society was the trade conducted along the border between Singapore and Sumatra. The government centred in Jakarta often approved and even encouraged barter with Singapore at the regional and national level. In many cases, however, bartering along the borders was done autonomously by the regional government and traders, and often out of state control. In these circumstances, the central government sometimes “illegalised” barter trade, while the regional government and societies, arguing that their barter transactions were “licit”, issued a challenge to the government’s order. Such tension and conflict over barter in the region was exacerbated by political upheavals such as regional rebellions in the 1950s and the Konfrontasi in the 1960s. This article traces changing policies and discourses regarding “barter” between Singapore and the Indonesian islands (mostly Sumatra) in the mid-20th Century, and highlight how an economic transaction was politicised, and how the ideas of licitness and legality were in confrontation in certain political backgrounds.

Download Full-text

Taiwan: Rural Society Stuart

The China Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0305741000017173 ◽

1984 ◽

Vol 99 ◽

pp. 553-568 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Stuart E. Thompson

Keyword(s):

Rural Society ◽

Rural People ◽

The 1950S ◽

Massive Outflow ◽

Taiwan Straits ◽

Peasant Farmers

Owen Rutter's somewhat idyllized picture of an essentially agricultural Taiwan could have portrayed the 1950s, or, equally, Taiwan at any time in the more than 300 years of Chinese settlement there. Most of the Chinese who crossed the Taiwan Straits to settle in Taiwan were peasant farmers, and, as they had done on continental China, they made their living by agriculture. In 1945, when the island reverted to China after 50 years as a Japanese colony, agriculture was still very much the predominant sector, and the majority of the population continued to rely on farming. But, from the late 1950s onwards, in the space of less than three decades, the pattern of more than three centuries has been radically altered. Industry has burgeoned to replace agriculture as the key sector, and, concomitantly, Taiwan's population is no longer characteristically rural. A massive outflow of rural people into the cities has left only one person in four living in the countryside

Download Full-text

“I APPEAL JUST TO YOU WITH MY PAIN”: STRUGGLE IN SOBIET BIOLOGICAL AND AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE IN LETTERS OF SCIENTISTS TO SOVIET LEADERS IN THE 1950s

Вестник Пермского университета История ◽

10.17072/2219-3111-2021-1-181-192 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 181-192

Author(s):

A. V. Rychkov ◽

Keyword(s):

Scientific Community ◽

Agricultural Science ◽

State Control ◽

Law Enforcement Agencies ◽

Dominant Position ◽

Public Sentiment ◽

Long Time ◽

The 1950S ◽

The Cold War ◽

Party State

The struggle in Soviet biological and agricultural science is examined through the prism of letters of scientists to Soviet leaders in the 1950s. Scientists’ “letters to power” were an important form of struggle of the scientific community to normalize the situation in the agrarian and scientific sphere under conditions of total party-state control. Considering science to be the most important element of the USSR’s international prestige, scientists who advocated classical genetics considered it necessary to rid biological and agricultural science of external "imperious" influences on the sphere of scientific knowledge. Moreover, some suggested the active use of party-state structures, not excluding law enforcement agencies, against their scientific opponents. Others believed that the shortcomings of the organization of Soviet science could only be eradicated by the scientists themselves, provided that the scientific community was widely involved in identifying the most important scientific areas through free creative discussions. With all the disagreements, the appeals of scientists to Soviet leaders, the author concludes, contributed to a change in public sentiment in favor of genetics. On the contrary, the supporters of Trofim Lysenko by their “letters to power” pursued the goal of maintaining his dominant position in science. Transferring scientific problems to the political plane, they called on Soviet leaders to resolve the contradictions accumulated in the agrarian-scientific sphere by the methods of party-state influence. The rejection of each other's arguments by the scientific opponents did not allow them to reduce the severity of confrontation in biological and agricultural science and did not contribute to scientific research. The appeal of geneticists to the authority of world science in the context of the Cold War further aggravated the situation in the scientific community, since in the opposite camp, this phenomenon was assessed as ideological sabotage. The inertia of such traditions of scientific communication persisted for a long time.

Download Full-text

Discourse, Reality and Rural Society: The Case of Tenancy and Employment Relationships in the Early Twentieth-Century Jianghan Plain

Rural China ◽

10.1163/22136746-01601004 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. 69-99

Author(s):

Jiayan Zhang

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Rural China ◽

Market Competition ◽

Rural Society ◽

Jianghan Plain ◽

Employment Relationships ◽

Late Qing ◽

Early Twentieth Century ◽

The 1950S ◽

The Republic

According to class struggle theory, rural China before 1949 featured two contrasting classes, the exploiting class and the exploited class. Some current research tends to—from the perspectives of market relations and moral economics—focus on the harmonious aspect of the rural society of that time. Based on different surveys and their associated discourses on tenancy and employment relationships in the Jianghan Plain in the late Qing, the Republic of China, and the 1950s, this article argues that different discourses emphasized different aspects of rural society. The surveys of the late Qing and some surveys of the Republic are closer to reality, while the CCP surveys of the 1950s and the gazetteers compiled in the 1950s, influenced by political propaganda and policy, are heavily loaded with ideological biases and exaggerate the landlord-tenant conflict. This kind of influence has gradually weakened since the 1980s, and the gazetteers compiled afterward are closer to reality. Those new studies that deny exploitation and evil landlords are overcorrecting. The Jianghan experience of tenancy and employment relationships demonstrates that in the early twentieth century, exploitation among classes, market competition, and moral economics all existed at the same time. Because the Jianghan Plain was prone to frequent water calamities, we also need to add the specific influence of the environmental factor to our understanding of tenancy and employment relationships in this region.

Download Full-text

REVISITING THE KANKŌ CHŌSA VILLAGES: A REVIEW OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE STUDIES OF NORTH CHINA RURAL SOCIETY

International Journal of Asian Studies ◽

10.1017/s1479591413000211 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 77-98

Author(s):

Linda Grove

Keyword(s):

Social Change ◽

North China ◽

Rural Society ◽

Review Article ◽

Customary Law ◽

New Materials ◽

Follow Up Studies ◽

Japanese Studies ◽

The 1950S

During the late 1930s and early 1940s Japanese researchers carried out a large and well-funded study of customary law in rural North China. The results of that research, published in the 1950s, have been one of the major sources for theories about prewar Chinese rural society. In the last twenty years Japanese and Chinese researchers have undertaken follow-up studies of the same villages. This review article introduces Chinese and Japanese follow-up studies on the kankō chōsa villages, the new materials and approaches they have used, and their contributions to on-going debates about Chinese rural society and social change.

Download Full-text