Effects of policy shifts on marital relations in a central-China village.

摘要

This thesis studies the effects of policy shifts on marital relations in a central-China village. The intensive empirical research in the village contributes to understanding the impacts of the state policy and traditional culture on women and their lives in contemporary rural China. Given the long history of patriarchy in rural Chinese society, this research uses feminist theory on patriarchy, gender, and the social construction of gender to analyze Chinese rural life at different points in times. Sociological theory is used to examine the relation between structure and agency so as to study how structure constrains individuals and how individuals respond to the restraints. Qualitative methodology enables to study the research question: did the 1978-economic reform improve or worsen women's situation in rural society? To address this question, this study takes a long-term view on the effects of state policies on rural women. There are 46 participants (women and men), aged from over 20 to over 90 years old. They are divided into 5 groups by the year of marriage, starting from those who got married before 1949 till 2005. The grouping helps to learn villagers' perspectives and practices on particular event or events within different contexts. This, in turn, contributes to the major findings: women played a decisive role for the prosperity of the family and acted actively to improve their situation in the family, thus making contributions to the continuation, transformation, and reproduction of rural society. State policies played an important role in changing the rural society. However, changing rural ideology is the outcome of individual initiatives and agency in transforming family life. For the future research, I suggested such issues as old-age support, basic education of rural children, and out-migrating young people, with the focus on the influences and impacts of the state policy and the initiatives and agency of people in villages.