Hygiene, Sociality, and Culture in Contemporary Rural China

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lili Lai
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Rural China ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Social Welfare Program ◽  
Rural Villages ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Village Life ◽  
Contemporary Chinese ◽  
Hygienic Conditions ◽  
Improve Health

This book presents a new perspective on attempts by the contemporary Chinese government to transform the diverse conditions found in countless rural villages into what the state's social welfare program deems 'socialist new villages'. Lili Lai argues that an ethnographic focus on the specifics of village life can help destabilize China's persistent rural-urban divide and help contribute to more effective welfare intervention to improve health and hygienic conditions of village life.

scholarly journals Land Consolidation in Rural China: Life Satisfaction among Resettlers and Its Determinants

Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 118
Author(s):  
Weiming Tong ◽  
Kevin Lo ◽  
Pingyu Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Life Satisfaction ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Rural China ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Land Consolidation ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Rural Villages ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Rural Dwellers

The Chinese government has pursued rural land consolidation under the Building New Rural Communities (BNRC) initiative. The consolidation projects aim to address the hollowing village problem, improve the living standards of rural dwellers, and promote urban-rural integration. Rural villages with small populations and poor infrastructure are merged into a centralized rural community, and their inhabitants are resettled. The newly vacated buildings are then converted to agriculture land, which allows cities to expand under the “no net loss” land-use policy. Despite the significance of the initiative, both in terms of the scale of operation and the impacts on the affected households, there are few empirical studies that scrutinize this form of rural restructuring. Drawing on data collected via surveys and interviews, this paper examines the processes of land consolidation and its impacts on villagers. From a development-as-modernization perspective, we outline three main processes of land consolidation: village mergers and resettlement, land circulation to rural cooperatives, and rural industrial development. Overall, the effects of land consolidation on the livelihood of resettled villagers are positive. This system generally improves housing and living conditions through increased levels of off-farm employment and income, but there are a number of barriers that may hinder a villager’s ability to find different employment. Housing and neighborhood characteristics have significant effects on the life satisfaction of villagers.

scholarly journals Hygiene, Sociality, and Culture in Contemporary Rural China. The Uncanny New Village

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lili Lai
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Rural China ◽  
The Political ◽  
Rural Welfare ◽  
The Mean ◽  
China Today ◽  
Village Life ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Contemporary Chinese ◽  
Mean Time

By taking the lived body as local, unstable, diverse, and open to urban and global incorporations, this book highlights contemporary Chinese and global reductions of diverse conditions into generalized objects, especially in the Chinese state's well-intended social welfare effort of "building socialist new villages" which in the mean time shows clearly how judgments come to be disguised as facts (Cf. Pigg 1992). The political economic roots and social determinants of "dirty villages," the strategies of inhabiting "villages with empty centers," and the local and national projects of cultural production all reveal much about class and power in China today. Unlike other close ethnographies of small places in China, this reading of local culture is considered in the context of the national and global practices that maintain a deeply divisive rural-urban divide in everyday hygienic practices. This book argues that substantive ethnographic attention to the specificities of village life in the contemporary Henan context can destabilize China's chronic rural-urban divide and contribute to an effective rural welfare intervention to improve the hygienic conditions of village life at present.

scholarly journals Hygiene, Sociality, and Culture in Contemporary Rural China. The Uncanny New Village

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lili Lai
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Rural China ◽  
The Political ◽  
Rural Welfare ◽  
The Mean ◽  
China Today ◽  
Village Life ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Contemporary Chinese ◽  
Mean Time

By taking the lived body as local, unstable, diverse, and open to urban and global incorporations, this book highlights contemporary Chinese and global reductions of diverse conditions into generalized objects, especially in the Chinese state's well-intended social welfare effort of "building socialist new villages" which in the mean time shows clearly how judgments come to be disguised as facts (Cf. Pigg 1992). The political economic roots and social determinants of "dirty villages," the strategies of inhabiting "villages with empty centers," and the local and national projects of cultural production all reveal much about class and power in China today. Unlike other close ethnographies of small places in China, this reading of local culture is considered in the context of the national and global practices that maintain a deeply divisive rural-urban divide in everyday hygienic practices. This book argues that substantive ethnographic attention to the specificities of village life in the contemporary Henan context can destabilize China's chronic rural-urban divide and contribute to an effective rural welfare intervention to improve the hygienic conditions of village life at present.

scholarly journals Early Childhood Reading in Rural China and Obstacles to Caregiver Investment in Young Children: A Mixed-Methods Analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1457
Author(s):  
Rui Li ◽  
Nathan Rose ◽  
Yi Ming Zheng ◽  
Yunwei Chen ◽  
Sean Sylvia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Cognitive Development ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Parenting Practices ◽  
Rural China ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Rural Villages ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
Childhood Reading

Studies have shown that nearly half of rural toddlers in China have cognitive delays due to an absence of stimulating parenting practices, such as early childhood reading, during the critical first three years of life. However, few studies have examined the reasons behind these low levels of stimulating parenting, and no studies have sought to identify the factors that limit caregivers from providing effective early childhood reading practices (EECRP). This mixed-methods study investigates the perceptions, prevalence, and correlates of EECRP in rural China, as well as associations with child cognitive development. We use quantitative survey results from 1748 caregiver–child dyads across 100 rural villages/townships in northwestern China and field observation and interview data with 60 caregivers from these same sites. The quantitative results show significantly low rates of EECRP despite positive perceptions of early reading and positive associations between EECRP and cognitive development. The qualitative results suggest that low rates of EECRP in rural China are not due to the inability to access books, financial or time constraints, or the absence of aspirations. Rather, the low rate of book ownership and absence of reading to young children is driven by the insufficient and inaccurate knowledge of EECRP among caregivers, which leads to their delayed, misinformed reading decisions with their young children, ultimately contributing to developmental delays.

Governing Art Districts: State Control and Cultural Production in Contemporary China

2014 ◽  
Vol 219 ◽  
pp. 827-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yue Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
Art Community ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Contemporary Chinese ◽  
Political Decisions

AbstractContemporary Chinese artists have long been marginalized in China as their ideas conflict with the mainstream political ideology. In Beijing, artists often live on the fringe of society in “artist villages,” where they almost always face the threat of being displaced owing to political decisions or urban renewal. However, in the past decade, the Chinese government began to foster the growth of contemporary Chinese arts and designated underground artist villages as art districts. This article explores the profound change in the political decisions about the art community. It argues that, despite the pluralization of Chinese society and the inroads of globalization, the government maintains control over the art community through a series of innovative mechanisms. These mechanisms create a globalization firewall, which facilitates the Chinese state in global image-building and simultaneously mitigates the impact of global forces on domestic governance. The article illuminates how the authoritarian state has adopted more sophisticated methods of governance in response to the challenges of a more sophisticated society.

The Quest for Sustainable Livelihoods: Social Development Challenges and Social Policy Responses in Guangzhou, China

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ka Ho Mok ◽  
Maggie Lau
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
The Social ◽  
Financial Burdens

China's welfare system has been a typical ‘residual welfare regime’, but the economic reform and market-oriented transformations in recent decades have weakened the original well-balanced ‘residual’ and ‘needs’ pattern. Marketisation of social welfare has intensified social inequality as those who are less competitive in the market-oriented economy have encountered tremendous financial burdens in meeting their welfare needs. In order to rectify the social problems and tensions generated from the process of marketisation of social welfare, the Chinese government has adopted different policy measures to address the pressing welfare demands from the citizens. This article examines how a local government in Guangzhou, capital city of Guangdong province, has responded to the call of the central government in promoting social harmony in the context of growing welfare regionalism emerging in mainland China. More specifically, with reference to a case study of Guangzhou, this article discusses how Guangzhou residents assess their social welfare needs and expectations, and how they evaluate the municipal government's major welfare strategies. It also reflects upon the role of the state in welfare provision and social protection, especially when many social welfare and social services have been marketised in the last few decades in China.

Place-making for the people: Socially engaged art in rural China

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meiqin Wang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Rural China ◽  
Business Environment ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Rural Villages ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Socially Engaged Art ◽  
Civic Spaces ◽  
The People ◽  
Intervention Community

In the past decade, socially engaged artistic practices have become a growing trend in China, embraced not only by contemporary art circles but also by broad intellectual communities. In this article, I explore this under-studied trend by looking at the practices of a number of art professionals who engage themselves with place-making in different rural villages against the backdrop of a rapidly declining countryside which has resulted from China’s top–down, GDP-driven urbanization and social development. Mainstream place-making, led by government in collaboration with private developers, has been primarily concerned with a good business environment in order to attract the highly mobile elite class or realize a quick return from speculative development. Place-making led by art professionals, on the contrary, aims to revitalize the deprived countryside through art and cultural activities, foster the growth of place-specific civic spaces, and accentuate the participation of local, grass-roots populations as well as the collaboration of urban intellectuals from various backgrounds. I argue that the efforts of these art professionals not only provide critical reflections and bottom–up alternatives to the dominant social developmental discourse, but also activate and expand the potential of art as an agent of social intervention, community building, and cultural change.

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