“A new consciousness of the countryside”? Elite ruralism in contemporary China

Abstract

This article discusses an elite form of ruralism in contemporary China. Using ethnographic material collected at two sustainable farming events, it introduces the intellectuals who organize these events as well as the urban residents who attend. Ruralism—the idea that ‘real’ China is found in the countryside, not the city—legitimates intellectuals’ narrative of Chinese nationhood as modern yet in touch with its cultural heritage and offers the promise of rediscovery and starting afresh to urban attendees, the majority of whom were born in the countryside. While elite ruralism sidesteps engaging rural residents and raises questions of representation, it also illuminates processes of demographic pluralization in the Chinese countryside, a trend observable elsewhere in Asia.

Keywords:

• Affect
• intellectuals
• ruralism
• urban-to-rural migration
• China

Acknowledgements

Research for this article was conducted as part of a PhD research project at the Australian National University. I acknowledge the generous support of Andrew Kipnis, Assa Doron and Simone Dennis throughout. I am also extremely grateful for the detailed suggestions and advice I received from two anonymous reviewers at Asian Anthropology.

Notes on contributor

Sacha Cody will be a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology starting January 2019. He is currently researching Chinese organizational culture and technology management.

Notes

1 Government-supported model organic farms (mofan youji nongchang 模范有机农场) are functional farms, although they are heavily used as sites for instruction and showcasing sustainable farming techniques and related business models to visitors (especially officials from other jurisdictions). They are pet projects of local government officials keen to promote sustainability and green-living concepts.

2 In adopting affect as an analytical concept in this article, I follow other scholars in that rather than define affect—a notoriously difficult task—I focus on what it does and how it works, an approach that lends itself to ethnographic inquiry (see Yang (2014) for a good summary of the scholarship on affect).

3 Translation taken from Beijing Foreign Languages School. 1988. A Chinese-English Dictionary (Han-Ying Cidian 汉英词典). Beijing: Beijing Business Press.

4 The English version of the conference handbook translated “stable” (wending 稳定) as “harmonious,” which I have corrected in this article.

5 My thanks to Yonjae Park at Australian National University for help in understanding the situation in South Korea.