The Significance and Influence of Local China

The book Native China puts forward and demonstrates some sociological theories with China style, such as "differential order pattern". This book is a mature book on community research, which represents an important turning point in Fei Xiaotong's early sociological research career, from field community research to social structure analysis. ?

In this book, the author regards the rural areas in China as a special department included in the concrete traditional grass-roots society in China, which dominates all aspects of social life in China, and illustrates the characteristics of rural society with the facts in China.

Fei Xiaotong believes that China society is local at the grassroots level. In rural society based on land, the population mobility rate is extremely low, which leads to the isolation and separation between villages. "Under the local restrictions, the rural society has become a society born in Sri Lanka and died in Sri Lanka." People grow up in familiar environments, and social customs handed down from generation to generation guide their behavior. In this society, language is enough to convey the experience of generations. "All cultures can be passed on from parents to children". On this basis, Fei Xiaotong pointed out that the difficulty of writing in the countryside lies in the fact that people in rural society do not use words to help their social life, and the root of treating stupidity lies in the changes in rural grassroots in China society. Fei Xiaotong also compared the social structure between China and the West from the relationship between group and self, and thought that western society is a well-defined group structure, and so is the relationship between group members. However, the social structure of rural areas in China is a pattern of difference order. He said: "take yourself as the center and throw it into the water like a stone ... but push it around like a water wave, pushing it farther and farther, pushing it thinner and thinner." This pattern of difference order is centered on "self" and full of flexibility, and the boundaries between group and self, public and private become very blurred. Fei Xiaotong discussed China people's "private" mind with this model. In traditional China society, one can sacrifice his family for himself, his political party for his family and the world for his political party. (Page 27) It is precisely because this differential pattern is a kind of "interpersonal network" that there is no group moral concept beyond interpersonal relationship in rural society. "China's law and morality are stretched to a certain extent, depending on the relationship between the object and itself". The establishment of universal relations is one of the important signs that modern society is different from traditional society.

According to the above concepts and simple structural analysis, Fei Xiaotong specifically analyzed the basic community "home" of rural society in China. He believes that as the home of a commercial organization, its size depends on the size of the business, and its main axis is between father and son, not between husband and wife. Family discipline ruled out tolerance for extramarital affairs. In order to maintain order, rural society does not emphasize the feelings between men and women, but emphasizes cooperation. The difference between men and women makes China's traditional emotional orientation biased towards the same sex, and the same-sex combination makes it difficult to consolidate family unity. As a result, the family with the same sex as the mainstay and the opposite sex as the supplement replaced the family and became the basic community of rural society. Fei Xiaotong believes that the order of rural society is maintained by "ceremony", which is a habit of obeying tradition formed through the process of enlightenment. As long as tradition can effectively deal with life problems, there is no need for law to maintain social order with courtesy, and no litigation is the characteristic of rural society. Fei Xiaotong pointed out that China is in the process of rural social transformation. To thoroughly implement the modern judicial system, we must "reform the social structure and concept first".

Fei Xiaotong further analyzed the power structure of rural society on the basis of analyzing how to maintain rural social order. He divided power into four types, namely, violent power in social conflict, consent power in social cooperation, elder power in social inheritance and current power in rapid social change. In rural society, there are both undemocratic violence power and democratic consent power, but neither of them constitutes the dominant aspect of power structure, because the former is limited by the level of agricultural productivity and the latter by the underdeveloped division of labor system, so rural society is "nominal autocracy". Dictatorship "... in people's real life, it is slack and weakness, it is a hollow name, and it is inaction. "In rural society, there is obviously another kind of power different from violence power and consent power. Fei cun, commonly known as the "elder forces", is an autocratic regime that is neither democratic nor independent. In a word, rural society is a politics of inaction and the rule of the elderly. Fei Xiaotong, while analyzing the order maintenance and structural stability of rural society, did not neglect the investigation of its changes. He believes that the process of changing from rural society to modern society is reflected in three aspects, namely, the change from blood to geography; Separation of name and reality; From desire to need. Blood relationship is the foundation of identity society, and geography is the foundation of contract society, so he said: "The change from blood relationship to geography relationship is a change of social nature and a great change of social history. "As far as the rural society under the authority of the elders is concerned, changes often take the form of' annotations', that is,' maintaining the authority of the elders and injecting the contents of changes', which leads to a great separation between name and reality, and the distance increases with the rate of change. An important difference between rural society and modern society is that people in the former act by desires, although these desires only satisfy the living conditions of human beings because of the cultivation of culture. In modern society, people use knowledge to plan social life not according to experience, but according to their own needs. Fei Xiaotong believes. From desire to need is a very important milestone in social change. "