China's peasants : the anthropology of a revolution / by Sulamith Heins Potter and Jack M. Potter.

0521355214
9780521355216
052135787X (pbk.)
9780521357876 (pbk.)

Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1990.

English

xiv, 358 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

HN733.5 .P68 1990

305.5/633/0951

"The world's greatest revolution has left its mark on China, yet China remains fully and essentially Chinese. What is it to be a Chinese peasant under these circumstances? This study of Zengbu, a Cantonese community, is the first comprehensive analysis of a rural Chinese society by foreign anthropologists since the Revolution in 1949. From their data gathered using anthropological field methods, Jack and Sulamith Potter examine the revolutionary experiences of Zengbu's peasant villagers and document the rapid changeover from Maoist to post-Maoist China. In particular, they seek to explain the persistence of the deep structure of Chinese culture through thirty years of revolutionary praxis." "The authors assess the continuities and changes in rural China, moving from the traditional social organization and cultural life of the prerevolutionary period through the series of large scale efforts to implement planned social change which characterized Maoism - land reform, collectivization, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. They examine in detail late Maoist society in 1979-80 and go on to describe and analyze the extraordinary changes of the post-Mao years, during which Zengbu was decollectivized, and traditional customs and religious practices reappeared." "Much of the material contained in this highly readable study is unique in the literature on China and will be of interest to the general reader as well as to students and scholars of anthropology and Chinese studies. Book jacket."--Jacket.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 340-347) and index.

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