Hongping Lian Livres

Focusing on the urbanization trend in contemporary China, this study explores the intricate dynamics between land-lost farmers and local government. Utilizing the extended case method, it examines how integration and conflict shape their relationship, revealing a complex interplay of power and interests. The findings highlight that both groups engage in a strategic game, where their actions not only perpetuate existing dynamics but also transform them. Through ethnographic insights, readers gain a comprehensive understanding of the perspectives from both land-lost farmers and officials.

The study is set against the backdrop of the urbanization trend in present-day China, and focuses on the relationship between farmers who have lost their land (“land-lost farmers”) and local government. Particularly, it applies the extended case method to answer the following two questions: first, in what ways do the forces of integration and conflict manifest themselves in the relationship between land-lost farmers and local government? Second, how do land-lost farmers and local government apply respective modalities in the context of their interplay? The main finding is that the two groups, land-lost farmers and officials, are engaged in a complex and dynamic relationship. That relationship is played out locally within a network of power-interest structures, which not only manifests itself as forces of integration and conflict, but also as an ongoing process, a game played by knowledgeable agents, whose strategies are enacted, and in so doing, both reproduce that game and alter it. Readers will gain an ethnographic understanding of the relationship based on an in-depth examination of perspectives on both sides of the equation.