Historical Anthropological Study of Land Tenure in Modern Jiangnan Rural Areas

Author: Zhang Peiguo
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-09-01
Features: In the Chinese revolution of seizing power, the peasant issue is the fundamental problem; in the transformation of socialist ownership and the construction of socialist economy in China, as well as in the transition from traditional Chinese civilization to modern civilization, the peasant issue remains the fundamental problem. This point has been recognized by an increasing number of people. However, the core of the peasant issue is still a subject of diverse opinions, with views often varying greatly. Professor Zhang Peiguo, in his postdoctoral research, concludes: "Land tenure is the holomorph of historical changes in the rural society, meaning that land tenure contains all the information content of the rural society's history." By analyzing the issue of land tenure layer by layer, I believe we grasp the core and essence of China's rural problems. This book breaks away from the conventional "conceptualized" writing style of modern Chinese rural history and the single-discipline consciousness, shifting from a narrow mindset to a multi-dimensional, comprehensive perspective. It moves from "observing" to "engaging closely," integrating political history, economic history, social history, cultural history, intellectual history, legal history, and annalistic history, highlighting the internal connections between social and historical elements. Using a unique historical anthropological method, the book explores aspects inherent in the rural society's local concepts, such as village boundaries, village registration, family property, family business, family finances, surface land, underlying land, inheritance of ancestral property, and clan property, to comprehensively reconstruct the historical process of land tenure evolution in the Jiangnan rural areas of modern China.