STUDIES OF THE WEAI BOOK SERIES
Yi Wu
(University of Hawaii Press, 2016)
For information from the publisher, please click here.
Negotiating Rural Land Ownership in Southwest China offers the first comprehensive analysis of how China’s current system of land ownership has evolved over the past six decades. Based on extended fieldwork in Yunnan Province, the author explores how the three major rural actors—local governments, village communities, and rural households—have contested and negotiated land rights at the grassroots level, thereby transforming the structure of rural land ownership in the People’s Republic of China.
“Yi Wu’s pioneering research on contested property relations draws on more than a decade of innovative fieldwork in villages and courts in rural Southwest China. Her framing concept of ‘bounded collectivism,’ emerging from the study of land disputes, draws attention to powerful continuities that never ceased to define rural life through the storm of land revolution, collectivization and Cultural Revolution to the contemporary era of market-driven family farming. Where many studies have focused on the role of the Party in reshaping rural society, Wu highlights the continued salience of cultural norms rooted in rural settlements and families in shaping significant social outcomes.”
—Mark Selden, Cornell University
