Introduction
Description of any society will not be sufficient if it does not touch upon the principles of society’s social organization. A professional attempt to understand Chinese rural society through this perspective was made by Fei Xiatong in his set of essays on rural China called From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society. Comparing the principles that Chinese society is organized through with the principles of the Western world’s organization, the author of the book makes them as distinct as possible.
Fei’s core concept
Fei’s core concept is that the principles of Chinese rural society differ significantly from those prevailing in the West. Studying the organizational principles and the difference between them in the two worlds is of much importance for understanding the society under analysis, as
Organizational principles are to a society what a grammar is to a language. The principles provide the structural framework for social action; they are intuitive and taken for granted; they are deeply embedded in people’s worldviews, as well as in the society that people re-create every day (Xiatong 19).
These organizational principles of Chinese rural society are introduced by Fei through the concept of chaxugeju, “a differential mode of association” as he calls it (Xiatong 68). Due to the awkwardness of the Chinese language the notion is hardly translated into English, the authors of the Introduction to Fei’s work, Gary G. Hamilton and Wang Zheng, suggest translating it by morphemes: cha denotes “difference”/”dissimilarity”, xu stands for “order” or “sequence”, and geju means “pattern” or “framework”. The 4th and the 5th chapters of Fei’s study are concerned with investigating this concept. The author sees it as a pattern of discrete circles:
Like the ripples formed from a stone thrown into a lake, each circle spreading out from the centre becomes more distant and at the same time more insignificant (Xiatong 65).
This way of social organization differs much from the Western one which the author sees as the separately bound bundles that are stacked in an orderly way (tuantegeju). In Chinese pattern, contrary to the Western one,
…personal relationships depend on a common structure. People attach themselves to a preexisting structure and then, through that structure, form personal relationships (Xiatong 71).
According to the author, the Chinese people do not seem to need large, continuous organizations; therefore, their society has adopted a differential mode of association.
We believe that the concept of chaxugeju suggested by Fei empowers one to think over Chinese social life in terms of the problem of selfishness common for China. Networks that exist in China do not link people in a single systematic way, these networks center on the individual and have a different composition of each person and cannot but influence the overall moral code that the Chinese are ruled by.
This description of Chinese society confirms the impression that one receives from reading Social Life of the Chinese by Justus Doolittle. This complete and narrative of the traditional and domestic life of the Chinese suggests the reader that the Chinese are proud and self-relying that goes along with the concept analyzed, and look with disdain on foreigners admitting their right of being unique in this world.
Conclusion
We do realize that the whole nation cannot be understood through the works of the two authors, but one shouldn’t underestimate the power of stereotype that is formed around the Chinese and that is reflected in the works mentioned. With its positive and negative features, the people of China present a separate cluster whose long and unique history makes everyone if not like but respect them.
Works Cited
Doolitle, J. Social Life of the Chinese. Kegan Paul, 2002.
Xiatong, F. From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society. University of California Press, 1992.