Fighting Covid-19 in rural communities: coordinated mobilization and reconstruction of community order in a village in Northern China

ABSTRACT

Taking a remote village in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region as a case study, this paper discusses how coordinated mobilization constructed a temporary grassroots-level emergency order in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The study reveals that the temporary emergency order was established through a combination of state power, villagers’ understanding of the infection risks of the coronavirus, and village self-management traditions. It finds that party members, elites, and villagers made a coordinated effort to mobilize and fight Covid-19. The paper concludes the state can effectively mobilize loosely-knit rural communities to face major risks such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19
• community prevention
• rural community
• emergency order

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In contrast to the Weberian bureaucrat’s neutral orientation, the cadre type of organization is a strong ideologically based commitment by personnel to the specific policy doctrine of the organization, and the cadre’s key skill is the ability to understand and embrace the organization’s policy doctrine and implement this doctrine in varying circumstances (Rothstein, 2015).

2. Renqing, an indigenous expression of social behaviour in Chinese society, refers to a form of reciprocal interpersonal interaction. The property of renqing for social exchange includes money, goods, services, and abstract components of affection; the principle is a normative standard and a social mechanism used to classify expressive ties, instrumental ties, and mixed ties (Hwang, 1987).

3. A stationed cadre refers to a person dispatched by a unit of a higher level to an administrative village to assist in village-level work. Cadres stationed in villages should be propagandists and promoters of policies and principles.

4. ‘Semi-acquaintance society’ in China is a transitional form between ‘acquaintance society’ where everybody knows each other and ‘stranger society’ where most people do not know each other. The village community in ‘semi-acquaintance society’ still has traditional value, but its economic and social foundation has changed.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported By Program for Young Talents of Science and Technology in Universities of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region [Young Talents of Science and Technology, Universities of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region NJYT-20-B23].

Notes on contributors

Xuejun Lian

Xuejun Lian is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work of Inner Mongolia University of Technology and also serves as director of Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Universities of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region-Rural Construction Research Center of Inner Mongolia Autonomous.

Weiguo Zhang

Weiguo Zhang is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and is affiliated with the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and the Institute for Life Course and Aging.

Yongfang Jia

Yongfang Jia is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work of Inner Mongolia University of Technology.

Yidan Zhu

Yidan Zhu is a Research Assistant Professor at the School of Graduate Studies, Lingnan University, Hong Kong.