TY  - CHAP
AB  - Abstract In any time and space and under any circumstance, we find peasants are never passive actors in their livelihoods and rural development. Instead, they always create space for manoeuvre in order to make changes. This chapter analyses the innovative actions taken by the majority of rural inhabitants in rural areas during the overwhelming modernization process, so as to affirm that peasants are the main actors of rural development. It is they who have shaped the transformation of rural societies and the history. Through the analysis, this chapter concludes that rural development is not an objective, a blueprint nor a design. It is not the to-be-developed rear field in modernization. It is not the babysitter for cities, nor a rehearsal place for bureaucrats to testify their random thoughts. Rural development is what peasants do. The path they have chosen reveals scenery so different from modernization. If we regard development as a social change, or a cross with influential meanings, we could understand rural development as peasants’ victories over their predicament. Villages accommodate not only peasants, but without peasants villages would surely vanish. In this sense, the most important part in rural development or rural change is peasants – their conditions and their feelings.
VL  - 22
SN  - 978-1-78441-622-5, 978-1-78441-621-8/1057-1922
DO  - 10.1108/S1057-192220150000022004
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/S1057-192220150000022004
AU  - Ye Jingzhong
AU  - Fu Huiyang
PY  - 2015
Y1  - 2015/01/01
TI  - Peasant Innovation and Grassroots Action in China
T2  - Constructing a New Framework for Rural Development
T3  - Research in Rural Sociology and Development
PB  - Emerald Group Publishing Limited
SP  - 89
EP  - 126
Y2  - 2024/04/25
ER  -