Women and labour division in China's rural society

While the concept of social economy may be new in mainland China, its practice in variety of forms has existed for long leaving its most honourable imprint in Mao’s era. However, due to the abrupt neoliberal turn in 1980s of the state and the dominating political discourse of marketization ever since, the social economy practices during that period of time have been stigmatized especially in terms of inefficiency. Today social economy, in its new garment, is proposed and practiced as a response to the new round of eco-socio-economic crisis in the world again, to which China is not immune, and this move in the novel political and economic conditions of necessity requires serious assessment of its previous performance in history. This current ethnographic research examines a village which has persisted on collective farming since Mao in the form of co-operative. It aims to discuss the new configuration of gender and labour in the development of the co-operative. By means of exploring the dynamics within the economic organization through identifying various forces in the village and the ways they interplay, this study hopes to document the challenges the agricultural workers are faced with and their efforts when they attempt to react to the globalization. With an emphatic focus on gender and labour division within the village as a result of the increasingly deepened privatization and commodification, this study also hopes to find out the possible way-out for the rural working class.