Creating new rural communitas: The case of China Taiwan’s rural regeneration

Abstract

Traditional sociological theory explains that a rural community is an enclosed unit. China’s fast modernization and urbanization, however, displays a rather different phenomenon, where rural communities are changing into open communities, which face the dual task of rebuilding internal relations and expanding external resources. Based on this background and practical cognition, the theoretical framework of the ‘new rural communitas’ is proposed, which expands the common enclosed relationships in traditional rural communities into new, open co-construction relationships with endogenous power as core, government power as support, and social power as coordination, emphasizing the full cooperation of these three types of power. On the basis of the theory, this article employs the practice of the rural regeneration policy in Taiwan as an empirical case, and analyzes how these three types of power affect and cooperate with each other. Furthermore, interviews have been conducted with local community members, government officers and social participants in three communities in Taiwan to give examples of three different types of new rural communitas. Finally, several suggestions toward constructing new rural communitas are discussed.