From Jiangcun Village (Yangtze Valley) to Lucun Village (Luts’un): Young Fei Xiaotong’s ‘Journey of the Heart’
Year: 2026
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: This chapter examines the path of Fei Xiaotong’s early academic explorations through his two early works, Peasant Life in China and Earthbound China . Although Peasant Life in China takes on a functionalist form, its core concern differs from the functionalism’s diffusion mode of cultural change. By emphasising gentry’s role in motivating cultural change, which stems from endogenous willingness rather than external diffusion, the work presents an “introversion” of modernisation that distinguishes from functionalism. Earthbound China takes a more self-contained rural society as its subject. By employing the concept of “leisure economy”, the work presents the seemingly irrational character of peasants investing surplus resources extensively in public rituals, which distinguishes from capitalist individual rationality. Such depiction of peasantry social rationality contains a common paradox in Chinese rural social science research—on the one hand, it is enthusiastic about emergence of modern individualised rationality in China, and thus regards public or collective life that resembles the “society” with caution; on the other hand, it simultaneously reveals a strong desire to revive Chinese society.
Source: Springer eBooks
Author: Wang Mingming
Institution: Peking University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7212168313