Precarious relations: rural cadres and the socialist education movement in Mao's China, 1962-1966
<p>In the Mao era, rural cadres served at the basic unit of party organs and administration organizations responsible for governing the life of villagers who constituted about 80 percent of the Chinese population. These cadres remain important players in connecting villagers and the countrysid...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | Chinese English |
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2022
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| Summary: | <p>In the Mao era, rural cadres served at the basic unit of party organs and administration organizations responsible for governing the life of villagers who constituted about 80 percent of the Chinese population. These cadres remain important players in connecting villagers and the countryside to the state in today’s China. Drawing upon previously inaccessible archives, in particular 350 personal dossiers of the cadres, from Hebei province, this thesis explores how male cadres constructed their masculine status in daily work and social life and how they formed tightly-linked groups exerting authority over the village-level bureaucracy in the Mao era. It examines the lived experience of cadres before and during the Socialist Education Movement (SEM, 1962-1966), a campaign that was aimed primarily at them. The campaign resulted not only in the investigation, criticism, and disciplining of more than two million cadres but also in the production of a large number of archives about them. Reading along and against the grain of archival sources allows us to reveal their actions of using local resources and institutions to create and maintain personal connections among themselves and with their superiors, in an attempt to make the collective agricultural system workable. The day-to-day life of the village-level bureaucracy depended on their social relations which helped localize the state’s dominance over rural communities.</p>
<p>This thesis engages with current debates on masculine status formation, the making of “new class” in socialist regimes, and Maoist state-formation. It makes three interrelated arguments. The first argument is that the cadres’ interpersonal relationships, fostered as they were in their daily work and social life, constituted the most politically salient social formation within the village-level bureaucracy of the Mao era. They shaped the authority of the Maoist state and formed part of the mechanism of its rule. The second argument is that male cadres constructed themselves as a new social group through localized dynamics involving the production and reproduction hierarchies of authorities as well as the question of social cohesion. These dynamics included internal competition among cadres, the leveraging of interpersonal relationships, and the display of wealth and authority. The third argument is that local dynamics also produced their masculine status while political campaigns against cadre privileges attempted to undermine those very status. The male-male bonds between cadres were built on the absence of female colleagues. However, the Party viewed many of their masculine social practices as deviant acts and implemented the SEM to discipline and indoctrinate them. The campaign, therefore, rendered their masculine status, based as they were on practices deemed to be outside of Party discipline, precarious.</p> |
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