Discourse, Morality, Body: Radical Socialism in a Chinese Model Village(1946-1978)

Abstract

This dissertation is based on my long-term fieldwork at Dazhai village in Shanxi Province, north China. Dazhai village was a famous national model of socialist agriculture and rural settlement during the Maoist era. Primarily based on archival research and oral history interviews with Dazhai villagers, my research reconstructs Dazhai villagers' life experiences during the Maoist era and examines the mechanisms and limits of the Maoist mode of governance. Specifically, I examine how the party authorities successfully exerted discursive and moral control to transform the villagers' thoughts and shape their compliance to official directives. My research also shows how the agency of the human body and close ties within the family counteracted the effects of official discursive and moral control. The underlying goal of my dissertation is to examine the interrelations between discourse and morality, and the manner in which the body often moderates the extremes of politics.