To what extent can it be claimed that the governmental and intellectual elite of the Qing dictated the parameters of ‘popular culture’?: Chapter Three

III: The construction of popular, or ‘peasant’, culture

In general, historians create a precedent for ‘Chinese culture’ based so called ‘great traditions’, such as Confucianism, and utilize available literary sources and documents. The resulting picture is the product of an elite, centralized and educated authority: a small minority of the population. Peasant culture, which denotes rural, agricultural communities, requires a different historical approach, and it is only through an alternative approach that one can begin to understand those communities that made up the vast majority of Chinese people. It is essential, therefore, to unearth an understanding of rural culture in terms of influences and differences, if any, between socially, economically and politically different entities. The communities in question need to be examined on a ‘root level’, looking specifically at internal and external relationships, may these be social, economic, political or otherwise. This, pertinently, also characterizes what is being referred to as ‘peasant culture’, the organization and relationships that existed within the community, for example in a family, system of work or religious belief, and also those relationships that existed externally, such as governmental control and systems of trade.

The question of comprehending ‘peasant culture’ incites three areas of consideration:

Firstly, that peasant culture was ultimately functional; specifically that culture is based on a notion of livelihood and collective identity. Secondly, that central reforms and methods of control directly determined the cultural practices of peasant societies. Thirdly, that within traditional China there existed inherent cultural values common to the majority of people, transcending social, economic and political boundaries and yet were self-cultivated and determined. However differing methods in exemplifying this approach creates further debate about the nature of a proposed cultural unity: did culture exist in a national system of formal, mathematical mechanisms of control, as G. William Skinner proposes, or were there indeed certain characteristics that transcended all sectors of society, despite of “potential differences in degree and quality within and between societies^[1]”?

An understanding of peasant culture can not be achieved by simply looking at a specific community in isolation or the effectiveness of external policies and methods of control. One needs to draw attention to the relationship between the two, the position of the central administration, the response of the community and the community’s fundamental systems of interaction. Therefore, peasant belief, norms and values can be understood as a product of negotiation, considering factors such as ‘tradition’, for example Confucian family values, bureaucratic reforms, methods of control, community level need and rational, peasant action. Understanding peasant culture requires the use of multiple disciplines, considering all sources available and not relying solely on obvious and immediately available material.

Firstly, it can be argued that peasant culture is understandable as something functional and mechanized: the values, beliefs and norms of a community relate specifically to the preservation of that community. Peasant culture, as thus, is a product of necessity and environment. Arrangements of belief and social interaction revolve around survival, maintenance and normality, for example systematic agrarian method reflecting security and uniformity and not self-conscious cultivation or speculation. This substantivist^[2] viewpoint heralds that private self-interest is inapplicable and that traditional societies should be seen as communities: tight cohesive groups that share distinct values in stable relations with one another^[3]. Societies that rely upon the land for their livelihood require a degree of systematic interaction on varying levels, may it be economically or socio-culturally, that is inherent and immutable. Without having an “embedded…livelihood strategy^[4]” that relates specifically to environmental and material conditions then a communities reality in not assured. Shared values, beliefs and norms, therefore, are necessary in such societies as cohesive communities need to be well adapted to deal with threats to security and sustenance, such as excessive or deficient rainfall, renegade groups or central government policies^[5], and also protect the subsistence needs of all villagers. On the notion that livelihood and culture are interconnected it is essential to examine the community on a local level^[6].

The development of commercialization, primarily from the spread of cotton cultivation^[7], from the eighteenth century readily illustrates a community peasant culture based on livelihood and cohesion. Huang points to the fact that whilst commercialization in Europe led to capitalism and the proletarianization of peasant economies, in China the small farm family persisted. Although the emergence of a dual system of family and managerial farms in the community led to a partial social differentiation, in relation to “different forms of production organization”, ultimately “managerial farms were in no way different from the small family farms and remained very much tied to the peasant economy^[8]”. Peasant farms adapted their organization of labour and resources to match managerial farm output levels, uniformly employing such method to ensure stability. The economic behaviour of peasant communities in this context of change exemplifies a cultural identity and modes of behaviour that are embedded within the community as a unit. A challenge to what Scott dubs the “right to subsistence^[9]” sees appropriate reorganization to match the demand and protect community livelihood. As thus, such a reaction maintains that culture is synonymous to peasant life and not derived from it. Values and beliefs exist uniformly to protect the status quo and manage external threats if necessary.

This position is not without its criticisms. Firstly, substantivism focuses on social structures at the expensive of analyzing both individual agency^[10] and adaptation strategies that occur in other non-Chinese or non-primitive ones^[11]. Secondly, and perhaps more pertinently for this discussion, such an argument downplays, or out right ignores, the existence and influence of the Chinese bureaucracy. With a rich history of central administrative control, such as methods of taxation, land reform, local administration, that spanned thousands of years, the influence the central authority had on the peasant community needs to be considered. As thus, the effect of the central government’s manipulation of state craft on peasant norms and values needs to be considered. It can be argued that the Imperial administration had a high degree of control over the peasant community, thereby dictating social belief. The pao-chia system and ritual standardization exemplify this point.

The pao-chia system was an instrument of sub administrative control that was applied to the whole of China, allowing secure control over peasant communities without costly or stringent enforcement:

“each household is given a placard…The name and number of adult males are written on it. In case any of them go away, their destination is recorded…Every ten households set up a p’ai-t’ou [placard-head], every ten p’ai a chia-t’ou, and every ten chia a pao-chang…at the end of each month a kang-chieh [willing board], giving insurance that everything has been well…is sent to the official concerned for inspection.^[12]”

Within the community a hierarchy was created, but its purpose was more than a simple census system. By providing records concerning inhabitants and their movements, the people in the community were watched and monitored with criminal or culpable acts being reported to the pia-chia^[13]. The system was under the supervision of local officials and in enlisting the help of locals allowed for government control to be widely extended. The methods of control instigated by the central authority ensured a subtle domination yet active role within community organization. State social policy provided a basis from which community organization, social interaction and economic behaviour could be executed, illustrating the degree to which peasant values and norms were influenced by external forces. A constant state presence allowed for an easy and effective ladder of control, passing from the top down edicts, proclamations and reforms that would be effectively implemented. A standardization in social organization allowed behaviour to be dictated, ultimately establishing a uniformity in practice and through that can be tracked through official sources and records.

The anthropologist James L. Watson’s fieldwork in the Hong Kong New Territories^[14] provides a specific example of standardization in China. Instead of simply suggesting that Chinese culture had become highly integrated through devices such as prosperity, education and printing^[15], Watson looked at integration on a more fundamental level, that of the amalgamation of local and official (orthopraxic) ritual practice. Watson claims that the state, with the aid of local elites, “sought to bring locals under its influence through co-opting certain popular deities and guaranteeing that they carried all the right messages^[16]”. The state pushed in the New Territories to unify ritual times and practices, encouraging the local deity Tianhou, Empress of Heaven, to ‘eat up’ minor gods who “survived in the residual form of red paper slips in the Tianhou temples^[17]”. The state’s standardization of ritual allowed different people to view the prescribed deity on their own terms. The state “imposed the structure but not the content^[18]” and the evidence that exemplifies standardization, such as in the death ritual volume^[19], demonstrates that peasant values and beliefs were led from state imposed structures.

However an explanation of peasant culture simply as a product of elite control is not satisfactory as it does not explain to intricacies of peasant life for example social interaction, economic motivation, human volition and organization of local beliefs and practices. What needs to be achieved, therefore, is to recognize how “society produces both differences and unities within its cultural categories and social organization^[20]”. Therefore, one needs to consider that peasant culture holds a dual nature, being relational to both a national framework and also community utility of resources. The socio-economic parameters established by the elite, educated classes ultimately provided a plateau for peasant communities to express themselves. Policy deployment, while effecting national organization, did not eradicate local level values, beliefs and norms but provided a more structured landscape for the spreading and cultivation of ideals. It is not unreasonable, therefore, to argue that peasant culture is understandable in relation to the whole, a ‘Chinese peasant culture’ that exists as an element of a wider ‘Chinese culture’.

G. William Skinner’s study of regional interaction explains social relationships and establishes a plausible backdrop for uniform systems of family relationships and religious belief. Specifically, Skinner “constructed a wide variety of formal models to analyze and explain important features of agrarian China^[21]”, for example, in exploring hierarchical relations between villages Skinner employs theoretical and mathematical constructs, from various disciplines, to explain social phenomena and relationships. A pioneer in the study of “a China-centered approach^[22]”, Skinner approached the study of Chinese social phenomena through avoiding traditional presuppositions, ultimately leading a generation of scholars to adopt multiple theoretical tools “best suited to the voluminous and historical information…now available^[23]”.

Skinner claims that rural China can be understood in terms of market hierarchies and systems, maintaining that “all central places in traditional China may be arranged in discrete hierarchies defined by economic functions^[24]”. There co-existed multiple market systems, such as a pure subsistence economy of no market arrangements and dual systems of goods purchasing and selling finished products^[25], and these systems interacted in a hierarchical structure; ranging from standard market town to central metropolis^[26]. The result was not only an economic cross-culture but social interaction outside the confines of a single social entity. Skinner cements his mode by applying it spatially, linking cities and towns through a transport cost and a central economic fact: transport cost. The resulting relations between market levels resulted in a “standard market town at the centre and villages distributed in a hexagonal pattern around it” and Skinner provides evidence of a “two ring structure: an inner ring of six villages and an outer ring of twelve^[27]”.

Skinner’s view point assumes that participants in market relations are economically rational, able to make personal decisions, such as how to manage and organize land or distribute labour, within a national hierarchy of economic interaction. The village’s dynamic goes beyond internal systems of organization; livelihood requires degrees of differing economic interaction with other communities and, as thus, an external framework of market hierarchies allows choice, fallibility and a cultural system determined from both above and below. In looking at market relations and hierarchies, therefore, one is presented with economic, administrative and cultural mechanisms working together from which one may conclude a fundamental unity and not a bifurcation of ‘peasant’ and ‘elite’. The personal participant and the central administration interact in an economic sphere that consequently generates cultural practice and interaction, with people able to freely pass ideas, gossip and form relationships. Culture, therefore, is relational and not dependent upon a single faction in the hierarchical system. The social horizon of the peasant not only encompassed the standard market town but was actually much broader, creating “social integration in traditional China^[28]”. Therefore, in examining this one factor of general society one can draw links between distinct social classes, existing in different economic climates. Ultimately, cultural spheres overlapped, creating a multi-faceted interaction whereby all agents contributed to the whole.

Little, in examining Skinner’s model, claims that there underlies certain assumptions, making the model “patently unrealistic^[29]”. In regionalising agrarian China several variables are called into question, such as variation of demand, population density and transport efficiency. A standardized model of understanding social and economic relations, such as Skinner presents, ignores the subtle, contextual effects of such variables. For example, use of China’s rich water transport system would have considerably different effects on the encompassing economic sphere, and therefore resulting social relations, than areas that used overland methods: “such contrasts in transport efficiency unavoidably distort the idealized countryside^[30]”. Skinner also bases his model on a plain terrain, ignoring real differences in physiographic features such as forests, mountains and marshes. Besides effecting factors of transport, a village in a valley, surrounded by mountains will have little comparison to a settlement on a large plain. Understanding peasant culture as formal models, based on national economic relations and systems of sophisticated hierarchical interactions, ultimately, ignores obvious areas of important research. Firstly, the effects of geophysical differences and secondly, the possible significance of alternative sources, for example those that are specific to internal community organization. Skinner’s method of formal models can only draw broad conclusions, ignoring the intricacies of social organization. Skinner has devised a framework of interaction that could explain how there would exist a unified cultural identity, but in understanding specific cultural traits, such as religious belief, there needs to be a more fundamental level of analysis.

Social institutions, such as the family, in peasant China exemplify more strongly that there existed a fundamental cultural unity than a prevalent individualism. John G. Kennedy states that values and beliefs are organized into systems that determine behaviour, which exist within the wider environment of elite political control and great traditions^[31]. In examining the systems of belief directly one can understand the relation between peasant, community and wider society. Ebrey argues that the close connection of family life to “religious beliefs, to primary economic activities of production and consumption, and to social organization at the local level^[32]” means that establishing an understanding of community beliefs and values can be achieved through examining the family. Through looking at epitaphs, brief biographies, fictional stories and advice booklets one can gain a glimpse into the family and community belief. Ebrey concludes from these sources that it is easy to show that social ideals, how the individual should behave, were seldom fulfilled in practice but their continued evocation still existed^[33]. Biographies show countless examples of filial sons and loyal wives, often to an agonizing extent. Family organization and values show a connection to a great Confucian tradition but also a self-awareness that allowed the individual personal expression. The individual existed ultimately within institutions that he was both accountable to and able to manipulate. The peasant held a relationship to tradition, a product of external methods of control and socially embedded principles, his community and state implemented methods of social organization, thereby executing an ability to adhere or adapt information upon his own agenda. Through using a range of sources, such as various forms of fictitious literature, informative literature, judicial records, tax and land records one can paint more than a static view of peasant life. One is shown at once that the peasant resisted authority and made ill choices^[34], whilst at the same time adhering to state practice^[35]. Values, norms and beliefs, as thus, can be seen to exist depending on the level of negotiation seen between the institutions outlined.

However, it is still necessary to consider peasant culture on a purely ‘creative’ level: the extent to which the general population was capable of volition and not simply acting outside the realm of orthodoxy. In order to achieve this the issue of sexual identity will be considered, or more specifically, the extent to which homosexual relations in China reflected the existence of personal wants and desires: an identity constructed intrinsically and not through state want.

---

^[1] John G. Kennedy, “Peasant Society and the Image of Limited Good”: A Critique, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 68, No. 5, 1966, p. 1213

^[2] See Daniel Little, Understanding Peasant China, Yale University Press, 1989 pp. 14-18 or Karl Polyani, The Great Transformation, Beacon Press, 2002 for further information over the debate whether or not human conduct is motivated by self or community interest.

^[3] Michael Taylor, Community, Anarchy and Liberty, Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 25

^[4] K. Polanyi, ‘The Economy as Instituted Process’ in E. LeClair, H. Schneider (eds.), Economic Anthropology, Rinehart and Winston, 1968, p. 126

^[5] Little, Understanding Peasant China, p. 15

^[6] Stephen Gudeman, Economics as culture: models and metaphors of livelihood, Routledge, 1986

^[7] Phillip C. C. Huang, The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China, Stanford University Press, 1985

^[8] Prasenjit Duara, a review of #The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China, Philip C. C. Huang in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 46, No. 1, 1986, p. 284

^[9] James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in South East Asia, Yale University Press, 1976, p. 167

^[10] J. I. Prattis, "Synthesis, or a New Problematic in Economic Anthropology", Theory and Society, No. 11, 1982, pp. 205-228

^[11] S. Plattner, Economic Anthropology, Stanford University Press, 1989

^[12] Ch’ing t’ung-k’ao, 22/5055, and Lu-li pien-lan. 1877, 20/17b, in Kung-Chuan Hsiao, Rural Control: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, University of Washington, 1967, pp. 44-5

^[13] Hsiao, Rural Control: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, p. 45

^[14] James L. Watson, “Standardizing the Gods: the promotion of T’ien-hou along the South China coast, 960-1960.” In Johnson, Nathan and Rawski (eds.), Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, Berkeley, 1985

^[15] Susan Naquin and Evelyn S. Rawski, Chinese society in the Eighteenth Century, 1985

^[16] Donald S. Sutton, ‘Ritual, ‘Cultural Standardization and orthopraxy in China, Modern China’, Vol. 33, No. 1, 2007, p.4

^[17] ibid., p. 4

^[18] Watson, “Standardizing the Gods: the promotion of T’ien-hou along the South China coast, 960-1960.” p. 323

^[19] Watson, “Funeral specialists in Cantonese society: pollution, performance and social hierarchy.” In Watson and Rawski (eds.) Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, Berkeley, 1988

^[20] Catherine Bell, “Religion and Chinese Culture: towards an assessment of popular religion.” History of Religions 29, 1, 1989, p. 39

^[21] Little, Understanding Peasant China, p. 68

^[22] ibid. p.68

^[23] ibid. p. 68

^[24] G. William Skinner, Marketing and Social Structures in Rural China, Journal of Asian Studies, 1964-65 (3 parts)

^[25] Little, Understanding Peasant China, p. 70

^[26] G. William Skinner, Cities and the Hierarchy of Local Systems in G. William Skinner (ed.) The City in Late Imperial China, Stanford University Press, 1977, p. 286

^[27] ibid., p. 18

^[28] Little, Understanding Peasant China, p. 77

^[29] ibid., p. 73

^[30] ibid., p. 74

^[31] John G. Kennedy, “Peasant Society and the Image of Limited Good”: A Critique, p. 1213

^[32] Patricia Ebrey, ‘Introduction: Family Life in Late Traditional China’, Modern China, Vol. 10, No. 4, 1984, pp. 380-1

^[33] ibid., p.383

^[34] Take, for example, breaking laws of the Ming and Qing that disallowed homosexual practice. For an overview please see Bret Hinsch, Passions of the Cut Sleeve: the male homosexual tradition in China, University of California Press, 1992

^[35] As shown through following the poa-chia system or in the success of the Native Chieftain Reforms in John E. Herman, ‘Empire in the Southwest: Early Qing Reforms to the Native Chieftain System’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 56, No. 1, 1997