Moral Politics in a South Chinese Village: Responsibility, Reciprocity, and Resistance

Exploring sensitive issues often hidden to outsiders, this engaging study traces the transformation of Ku Village during the first tumultuous decade of reform. Faced with an array of daunting government dictates, villagers have chosen active strategies for fighting back. Their weapons include resisting policies they consider unreasonable by evading fees, taxes, and family planning regulations; challenging the legitimacy of the local government; and reestablishing clan associations to supercede official authorities. Drawing on compelling personal stories, Ku argues that rural people are not in fact powerless and passive; instead they have a moral system that informs their everyday family lives, work, and political activities. Through his richly realized ethnography, Ku shows the reader a world of memorable, fully realized individuals striving to control their fate in an often arbitrary world.