Seeing like a village : local leadership, survival, and the great leap famine in China
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: History, Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Mscichowski, Jakub
issued: 2020-08-31T22:41:57Z
issued: 2020
related degree: Master of Arts - MA
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: This thesis examines grassroots leadership during China’s Great Leap Forward, which Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched in 1958 to industrialize and transform the People’s Republic of China (PRC) into a communist state. Owing to the CCP’s competitive political culture, the campaign incentivized the exaggeration of harvests and the violent punishment of anyone who dared criticize the state’s new policies. Food shortages led to famine, and by 1962 over 30 million people had died from unnatural causes. Ignoring its own role in perpetuating an ideology that valued orthodox thinking over the truth, the state blamed the famine largely on the excesses of unscrupulous or fundamentalist cadres. Because research on atrocities is often concerned with the identities of perpetrators, many scholars have also rightly emphasized the role played by these grassroots leaders. Nevertheless, investigations carried out by the state indicate that many leaders also prioritized the well-being of their communities over the interests of the state. I argue that the grassroots leaders who put their constituents first were acting in accordance with an intangible body of localized expectations, practices, and beliefs called the local logic of survival. This logic was always embedded in the rhythms of daily life, accommodating of new situations or crises, and tied to the physical and historical space in which it operated. Because it existed within rural people’s assumptions and values and was never necessary to document in full, this thesis positions the experiences of a rural intellectual named Geng Xiufeng from Hebei as a case study. When the Great Leap Forward upended life in the countryside, leaders who shared Geng’s worldview and experiences worked hard to ensure their communities’ survival. They tolerated people eating raw crops from the field, distributed larger rations than were permitted, used what had worked in the past to shape village policy, and valued the knowle…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/75796
note: Seeing Like a Village: Local Leadership, Survival, and the Great Leap Famine in China by Jakub Mscichowski B.A. (hons.) Simon Fraser University, 2017 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (History) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) August 2020 © Jakub Mscichowski, 2020 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, a thesis entitled: Seeing Like a Village: Local Leadership, Survival, and the Great Leap Famine in China Submitted by: Jakub Mscichowski in partial fulfillment of the requirements for The degree of: Master of Arts In: History Examining Committee: Co-supervisor: Timothy Cheek Professor The University of British Columbia History Co-supervisor: Jeremy Brown Associate Professor Simon Fraser University History Supervisory Committee Member: Glen Peterson Professor The University of British Columbia History iii Abstract This thesis examines grassroots leadership during China’s Great Leap Forward, which Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched in 1958 to industrialize and transform the People’s Republic of China (PRC) into a communist state. Owing to the CCP’s competitive political culture, the campaign incentivized the exaggeration of harvests and the violent punishment of anyone who dared criticize the state’s new policies. Food shortages led to famine, and by 1962 over 30 million people had died from unnatural causes. Ignoring its own role in perpetuating an ideology that valued orthodox thinking over the truth, the state blamed the famine largely on the excesses of unscrupulous or fundamentalist cadres. Because research on atrocities is often concerned with the identities of perpetrators, many scholars have also rightly emphasized the role played by these grassroots leaders. Nevertheless, investigations carried out by the state ind…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2020-11
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0394126
language: eng
degree discipline: History
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/75796