Ordinary Villagers Research Articles

The Spatial Design and Philosophy of Vernacular Dwellings in Lingnan Sub-region -- The Example of an Ordinary Village Settlement

Vernacular dwellings are an extremely important building type worldwide, and as an important carrier of the daily life of the vast rural population, they concentrate the local traditional building craftsmanship and the appearance of rural life. By tracing the construction and use of vernacular dwellings, it can provide useful clues for reconstructing the weak community relations in modern society. In the studies on residential houses, researchers often select official-style buildings located in the city and residential houses in the core of the region as the objects of study, and less research has been conducted on ordinary vernacular residential houses. Therefore, this paper selects a common village settlement located in the Lingnan sub-region, China as the research object, records the original information of the settlement, and restores the appearance of the dwelling with computer technology, and further analyzes the vernacular settlement in terms of planning and design, construction technology, and ecological characteristics, in order to comprehensively interpret its structural technology characteristics and cultural connotations, and provide useful assistance to policy makers and planning and design practitioners in the preservation and cultural transmission of historical buildings. Vernacular architecture has gradually disappeared in the context of modernization, and the study in this paper is also a blueprint to keep the backup of vernacular houses in Lingnan sub-region.

Shaman Motive in Korean Literature

This paper analyzes literary works that allow one to trace the changes in the perception of shaman cult in various periods of Korean social development and sheds light on the popularity of shaman motive in the 21st century. In Kim Tonni’s “Portrait of a shaman” (1936), the conflict between traditional and Western beliefs is shown through the image of a shaman woman symbolizing the ignorant Korean past and her son who converted to Christianity. Han Seungwon in his novels, uses the motive of the call for blood of those people possessed by ghosts and describes shamans’ life, traditions, and rituals. Shaman rituals are also described in the works of Park Wanseo. In her childhood memories, shaman women are depicted as transcendental beings tied to the other world. Epic novels by Park Kyongni, Cho Chongnae, Choi Myunghee describe the life of ordinary villagers against the backdrop of historical events. The main character is usually a shaman or her daughter in a love relationship. Shaman motive is also present in some novels written in the 21st century, in which main characters believe in spirits and shamans’ prophecies coming true. This implies that the belief in spirits is an inseparable part of Korean cultural identification, even for those who claim to be an atheist. Because shamanism in Korea is perceived as an important part of culture, the interest in shamans and shamanism continues to grow.

When Individual Represents the National: Understanding Trauma through History and Myth in Anisul Hoque’s The Ballad of Ayesha

In his novel, The Ballad of Ayesha (2018), Anisul Hoque portrays a young woman named Ayesha and her sufferings in life after a sudden disappearance of her husband Joynal Abedin, an officer in Bangladesh Air Force, on a fated day in 1977. Ayesha, with her two little children, determinedly fights off the woes of life and waits, with a secret hope, for her beloved husband’s return. This tale, however, throws light on a period of extensive instability and bloodshed in the history of a newly independent Bangladesh, when a great mutiny in the armed forces has been brutally suppressed by then military ruler General Ziaur Rahman in the aftermath of his ascend to power after the brutal assasination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in the hands of a group of military officers. The novel, as I argue, presents this history in the background of Ayesha’s traumatic experience which is parallelly presented with Behula’s trauma, a legend found in the popular folk-epic Manashamangal Kavya, in the wake of Lakhinder’s death by snake-bite on their bridal chamber due to goddess Manasha’s wrath. Thus, the text intertwines the personal trauma of an ordinary village woman with a popular myth in Bengal in the context of a dark historical chapter of Bangladesh. This paper, thus, investigates the representation of history and myth in this historical novel and argues that the narrative, while presenting individual traumas of Ayesha and Behula, ultimately foregrounds a period of national trauma in the history of Bangladesh, and challenges some propagandist political narratives at the same time.

Decentralization, legitimacy, and democracy in post-Soviet Central Asia

During the 1990s, a conventional wisdom emerged, based on literature going back decades, that political decentralization might be among the most effective forces for democratization. If ordinary people could participate in autonomous local governments, democracy would be built from the ground up, ultimately shaping the entire political system. Once decentralization reforms were implemented across the world, however, the results were disappointing. Authoritarianism not only thrived at the local level, it could also undermine democratization at the national level. Thus, local-national transference still held, but sometimes as a poison. In this context, the case of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan is an anomaly. Here, the relative success of political decentralization—rather than its failure—nevertheless failed to spur democratization at the national level. I argue that this is because decentralization allowed national authorities to appease international donors while they consolidated their own power. Moreover, while decentralization empowered local communities, it did so in ways that personalized local authority and pitted local and national authorities against one another, resulting in intense localism and antagonistic center-local relations that undermined any democratic transference. The case study findings are based on ten months of field research, which includes interviews with local and national officials, ordinary villagers, and representatives of NGOs and international organizations.

Analysis on the Subjective Willingness of Public Participation in the Scenic Villages’ Construction and Its Related Factors

The construction of scenic villages can not be done without the active participation of the local residents and it is of great significance to analyse the residents’ participation willingness and its related factors. On the basis of drawing experience from the present research results, we, through house-to-house questionnaire surveys and sampling interviews, survey residents in five villages of Hangzhou city about their willingness to participate in the construction of scenic villages themselves, participation paths and their attitudes toward external participation, and adopt the methods, such as exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis(CFA), to verify three hypotheses(H1, H2, H3). The study finds that: (1) the general participation willingness of village residents is comparatively high, but the participation willingness degrees of different village groups are quite different. According to the degree of participation willingness, the sequence from high to low is: village cadres > farmhouse and rural lodging operators > college village officials > staffs employed in the village enterprises > ordinary villagers > resident cadres. (2) There are relatively big differences among the villagers’ recognition degrees of different participation routes in the construction of scenic villages. The highest difference significance of the correlation is the multi-family joint loans (1.160). The lowest is to publicize, encourage and actively promote the construction of scenic villages (0.936). (3) The verification results are in favor of three hypotheses that the resident identity of the villagers has a significant impact on their willingness to participate, the path of participation, and their attitudes towards the external participation. According to the research results, the following suggestions are made: improve the awareness of the related subjects, especially the villagers by increasing the publicity; take measures to attract the active participation of the new business entities; open up the input channels to motivate the villagers; improve the public participation degree of the scenic villages’ construction by coordinating the relation among investment subjects and guaranteeing the villager’ interests etc.

Zimbabwe Ruins in Botswana: Settlement Hierarchies, Political Boundaries and Symbolic Statements

At its peak in the sixteenth century, the Zimbabwe Culture encompassed an area the size of France. The greater Tuli area in east-central Botswana formed the western extent of this culture area. Here many dzimbahwe mark the residences of sacred leaders in the later Khami period (1400–1840 ad). These stone-walled headquarters formed a pyramid of political importance, with district chiefs (Level 4) and petty chiefs (Level 3) at the top and headmen (Level 2) and commoners (Level 1) at the base. Commoners and their headmen lived near arable land, while petty chiefs placed their administrative centres at the boundaries of their small chiefdoms. In death, sacred leaders rested in dzimbahwe on special hills, while ordinary villagers were buried in their homesteads. During the Khami period in Botswana, these various settlements were part of only one Level 4 district: Level 5 and Level 6 capitals were located elsewhere. After the collapse of the powerful Torwa state at Khami, decorative symbols changed from emphasizing the majesty of kingship (Khami) to the responsibilities of sacred leaders (Zinjanja), and then back again to kingship in the Rozvi state (Danangombe). The powerful Rozvi state did not extend to the Tuli area, probably because it was too dry.

Pioneers of the plantation economy: militarism, dispossession and the limits of growth in the Wa State of Myanmar

The characteristic mobility of highland populations in Southeast Asia relied to a large extent on their particular adaption to an ecological environment: swidden cultivation of tubers on mountain slopes. This ecology corresponded to cosmologies in which potency was limitless, or at least had no fixed and delimited precinct (as did the rice paddies and Buddhist realms in the valleys). Military state building, modern transport, and new crops and agricultural technologies have effectively ended swidden cultivation. In this article, I follow the pioneers of the plantation economy in the Wa State of Myanmar, who dispossess local populations of their land and employ them as plantation labour. The limits of growth and potency they encounter are (a) in the natural environment and (b) in the resistance of local populations. Yet, even though there are such limits, the potency to which these pioneers aspire is still limitless. It is however channelled through a new economy of life, epitomised in the plantation, nourished in excessive feasting, and maintained by the kinship dynamics of capture and care.

ИНТЕЛЛИГЕНТЫ ИЗ КРЕСТЬЯН ИВАН ГОЛЫШЕВ И ИВАН СЫТИН: КНИГОИЗДАТЕЛЬСКАЯ И ПРОСВЕТИТЕЛЬСКАЯ ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТЬ

In the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a lot was done in the field of educating the population of the Russian Empire and introducing it to reading. The reforms of Alexander II gave an additional impetus to the development of book publishing in the Russian province. This article is devoted to two bright representatives of the intelligentsia, natives of the peasantry of the Upper Volga region, I. A. Golyshev and I. D. Sytin. Evidently, I. D. Sytin stands alone among the representatives of the peasantry of the Kostroma province. He was the greatest pre-revolutionary book publisher of the Russian Empire. A peasant from the settlement of Mstera I. A. Golyshev also made a significant contribution to the book publishing business of Russia, but in the Upper Volga region. Both of them day after day, to the best of their abilities, made everything that depended on them, so that a book, a newspaper, a magazine could become closer to the average citizen and villager. The article demonstrates the desire of I. A. Golyshev and I. D. Sytin to make as many ordinary city and village residents as possible prefer addressing the printed word rather than spending time idly (often abusing alcohol). Thanks to the activities of such ascetic educators (cultural traders), the scope of influence of printed materials on the ordinary population of the Russian Empire has expanded. In general, book publishing and educational activities of the characters of this article did not go beyond the dominant ideology of tsarist Russia, based on the famous triad by S. S. Uvarov — «Orthodoxy — Autocracy — Nationality».

Опыт трудовой миграции сельских жителей Калмыкии (по результатам глубинных интервью)

Introduction. Labor migration of Kalmykia’s rural population is a pressing challenge for the region. Permanent nature and endurance of the socioeconomic crisis in the agricultural sector of the republic have been adversely affecting the living standards of ordinary villagers. Lack of work opportunities and low salaries result in that the latter migrate en masse to the regional capital and even further. Goals. The study aims to analyze labor migration experiences of local rural dwellers. Materials and Methods. The paper summarizes a number of in-depth structured interviews. The qualitative research methods employed make it possible to view the issue in the eyes of unrelated actual participants of the migration processes, with certain attention paid to their backgrounds and life paths. Results. The work reveals one of the key economic factors underlying labor migration is the necessity to pay mortgage and consumer loans. And migration waves closely align with individual life cycles, such as marriage, divorce, births and even weddings of children. Some respondents reported their migrations were determined by certain adulthood stages of children. All these aspects give rise a new context of family and marriage relations: there emerge guest marriage patterns and changes in gender roles, e.g., in some families those are women who act as migrant workers. Roles of grandparents experience transformations forcing the latter to assume functions of the absent father of mother. Horizontal social networks come to the fore, including territorial and kindred ties. Such migrant labor experiences become a tool of economic strategies and mobility: people purchase dwellings in the city, and support children funding their plans with the earned money. So, migration of parents definitely serves a landmark for future migrations of their descendants. The results obtained attest to that the social profile of rural labor migrants contains quite a share of active individuals intensely motivated to work, ones who strive for better living standards and can adjust themselves to strenuous living / working conditions staying away from home and family.

Between militants and “mafia”: Interrupting dispossession in rural Pakistan

In 2000, one of Pakistan’s largest social movements began: a tenant struggle for land rights on the country’s military farms. Though the military tried to subdue the movement, it eventually succeeded insofar as many tenants stopped paying rent. As a result, villagers experienced a generalized (albeit uneven) prosperity. Certain movement leaders, in particular, became especially wealthy, relocating from their mud houses to big bungalows, replacing their motorbikes with SUVs, and transitioning from tenant farming to lucrative businesses in nearby cities. They also started moving around with armed security, allying with urban elites, and entering Pakistan’s major political parties. Rumors also began spreading that some leaders were using violence or intimidation to accumulate this political-economic power. In the movement’s afterlife, ordinary villagers began to wonder: were their leaders still committed to militantly pursuing villagers’ collective interests? Or were they now using the movement for their own private, even criminal, ambitions?

A Framework for Understanding the Institutional Arrangements of Urban Village Redevelopment Projects in China

Large-scale urban village redevelopment projects (UVRPs) have been implemented in different ways in China in recent years. This study develops an analytical framework for understanding the heterogeneity of institutional arrangements for UVRPs in China. The analytical framework is established from the perspective of neo-institutional economics. Decision-making and funding sources are used as two dimensions to classify the institutional arrangements into four categories: top-down with government funding (TGF), top-down with villager funding (TVF), bottom-up with villager funding (BVF) and bottom-up with private developer funding (BPDF). The comparative analysis reveals that the bottom-up institutional arrangement is generally more effective in political persuasion than the top-down one, especially when villagers’ committees (VCs) that are responsible for the project implementation are elected freely and fairly. When incorporating the dimension of funding sources into the analysis, a TVF institutional arrangement is likely to incur higher transaction costs than a TGF institutional arrangement, leading to the project having a longer duration. However, when private developers are allowed to participate and to develop UVRPs, the transaction costs will increase due to opportunism and information asymmetry. Policymakers should play an active role in arbitration as it would effectively mitigate the size of transaction costs used to deal with clashes between VCs, ordinary villagers and private developers. Based on information for 394 UVRPs collected from five coastal cities in Zhejiang province, the research findings reveal that a TVF institutional arrangement, which has the highest transaction costs, is still dominant in China. This may be the result of policy continuity and path dependence. Institutional change is contingent on the relative costs, which are the sum of the transformation costs and the transaction costs. Incremental institutional change, rather than radical institutional change, is more likely to occur in China.

Path Analysis on the Children’s Characteristics and Environmental on the Quality of Life of Children Aged 2-4 Years

OBJECTIVE: Quality of life is a person's self-perception of the enjoyment and satisfaction of life. Health related quality of life (HRQOL) is multidimensional, which is the individual's perception of the impact of a person's health. Data from US News shows the quality of life of Indonesia is ranked at 40 from the 80 countries in the survey. The quality of life of children can be influenced by factors such as foster patterns, immunization status, breast feeding, no smoking area, and safe water. This research aims to determine the influence of exclusive feeding, immunization, foster patterns, no smoking are, and safe water to the health status and quality of life of children. 
 
 METHOD: This research is a quantitative observational study with a research design of retrospective cohort studies. Population of this study is all toddlers aged 2-4 years old who reside in the village worthy of children (exposed groups) and ordinary villages (unexposed groups) in the region of Sleman regency. The large sample in this study was 350 respondents with multistage random sampling data retrieval techniques. 
 
 FINDINGS: The quality of life of the children was directly affected by health status (b=0.006; SE=0.054; p<0.001), foster pattern (b=0.079; SE=0.055; p<0.001), and safe water (b=0.004; SE=0.145; p<0.001). Health status was affected by exclusive breast feeding, foster pattern, and safe water. Foster pattern was affected by safe water (b=0.056). 
 
 CONCLUSION: The quality of life of the children is directly affected by health status, foster patterns, and safe water. The quality of life is indirectly affected by exclusive breast feeding.

Paperwork, patronage, and citizenship: the materiality of everyday interactions with bureaucracy in Tamil Nadu, India

AbstractThis article explores the material practices through which lower‐caste and poor villagers engage with bureaucracy in contemporary India. We take documents and paperwork – such as ration cards and community certificates – as a ‘lens’ through which to explore how paper materiality is infused with the politics of power, patronage, and identity. The article brings ethnography from rural Tamil Nadu, South India, in conversation with two bodies of literature: one on the materiality of bureaucracy and one on the nature of political mediation in contemporary India. We demonstrate how everyday engagements with paperwork as well as processes of applying, form filling, and securing recommendations are constitutive of social and political relationships and, ultimately, of citizenship itself. Political mediation around paperwork and bureaucracy generates a hierarchy of citizens rather than equal citizenship for all, yet ordinary villagers transpire as anything but passive. Drawing on patronage networks, engaging in affective performances, and navigating a politics of identity, they actively negotiate access to the state in an attempt to claim their rights as citizens.

The Myths and Local Wisdom as The Enhancment Effort for Positive Image of Tourism Village.

The purpose of the research was to investigate the myths and local wisdom that were developing in Widodomartanii Yogyakarta as well as the continuity effect upon the positive image of the village, and empowered sector to preserve the tourism object. The research subject determined by the information based on the assigned criterion related to potential tourism and its development. The data found considered as ethnographic. Descriptive research conducted on this paper that aims to picture the state of the object of research recent based on the factual data found objectively in the village through field survey. The data collection gathered through three steps. The first was an observation which divided into two. The first was a direct observation in use to gather information about Blue Lagoon. The second was recording observation including recording narrative method; The second was through the interview with MR.Suhadi as the successor of the water management of Blue Lagoon and the others with structured an unstructured interview method; And the third was to filter from related literature. Furthermore, the technique analysis from the gathered information data. The research result found that the myth and the local wisdom in a village organized locally and fully supported can transform an ordinary village turn to be a tourist village so the village can change the image of the previous as ordinary village to tourism village in Widodomartani Village. It also can generally open wider opportunities for the resident to have new beneficial activities.

ELECTION FINANCES OF GUADALUPE VILLAGE CANDIDATES IN CEBU CITY, PHILIPPINES

This study examined and analysed the election expenditures incurred by local candidates during the latest 2013 village level election in Guadalupe, Cebu City, Philippines. The study also assessed the capability of Guadalupe village election candidates to run and win elections taking into account their income, campaign funds and incurred expenditures. A descriptive survey research design was employed in the study through one-on-one interviews with identified respondents. Secondary data substantiated the primary information generated from the research respondents. Findings revealed that campaign funds of election candidates are too high compared to the average income of ordinary village residents. In effect, only 15 candidates ran for election in Guadalupe village out of 33,000 registered voters. Ordinary aspiring candidate could not afford to raise the huge campaign needed funds. Because of limited income, Guadalupe residents aspiring to run in the local election were not able to take part in the election race. The study concludes that election financing and expenditures play a crucial role in determining voting behaviour and election outcomes. Examining election candidates’ expenditures affords transparency, fair electoral processes and can provide check and balance towards corruption and its prospects of occurrence especially during election period. It is recommended that the Commission on Election puts ceiling on election expenses to minimize campaign spending among the candidates thereby foster fair play during election campaigns. The candidates may also employ cyber campaign strategies by making use on social media as affordable and cheap way to do campaigns. Article visualizations:

Converts vs Ordinary Villagers in Late Qing Civil Trials, and the Rise of the Boxers

Village civil cases in the Qing Dynasty mainly dealt with households and marriage, land, and debts, etc. It was not uncommon for village disputes to end up in court, which functioned as a vent to release the sense of grievance felt by the disputants. Seemingly trivial cases were thus not trivial at all for those concerned. Prefectural or county officials’ mishandling of a petty civil case could spark village conflicts. As a consequence, such trials were seen as a sensitive issue in rural governance. After the 1860s, the unequal treaties had allowed Western missionaries to proselytize deep into the North China countryside, offering “political protection” for their converts in an attempt to maximize their number. The missionaries interfered extensively in village judicial actions, taking the side of their converts in civil lawsuits that pitted church members against ordinary people. This led to a general situation of “deceitful converts against honest men,” making the latter feel they were the victims of injustice. The channels that would have allowed the ordinary villagers to vent their grievances via litigation were thus blocked up. Their accumulated resentment burst its barriers and finally exploded in the violence of the Boxer Uprising.

Partitioning Commons and Devolving Them from Communal to Sub-Communal Groups: Evidence from China’s Community Forest Management Organizations

Existing research has extensively explored various approaches to enhancing the governance of community-managed commons; however, limited studies have discussed whether it is effective to partition commons and devolve them from communal to smaller, sub-communal groups. We examine this question based on the evidence from two common-property timber production communities that devolved their forests from the administrative village to villagers’ groups in Fujian, China. Using the comparative case study method, we explore the mechanisms by which this organizational restructuring affected democratic governance, revenue allocation and economic efficiency of timber production. We find that by decreasing the size of forest management units, the restructuring increases the participation of ordinary villagers in community forestry and enhances the equity of revenue allocation. However, physically partitioning forests may undermine scale economies, and the small, sub-communal forest management groups tend to have weak financial and managerial capacities. Thus, partitioning forests into villagers’ groups threatens the long-run efficiency of commercial timber production. This research not only presents an innovative toolkit of enhancing community forest management but also sheds light on the optimal organizational structure of community forest management under different organizational goals and contexts.

Changing community relations in southeast China: the role of Guanxi in rural environmental governance

Rapid urbanization in China has been accompanied by increasingly serious environmental problems in rural areas, and government initiatives to control pollutions have not been successful, particularly with livestock farming pollution. One of the main causes is misunderstanding the changing influence of local Guanxi networks. Based on a case study in Southeast China, it is argued that the traditional Guanxi between villagers have fractured; the old, relatively unitary community has been replaced by different interest groups mainly formed around pig farming, with the pig farming household having stronger and more diverse Guanxi than others. The traditional mutual-help networks no longer have the ability to regulate disreputable behaviors, but exist in a way that tends to support and legitimates newer self-interested and financially-oriented networks, meaning that the ordinary villagers are increasingly caught up in condoning the poor environmental practices of the wealthy pig farmers. The paper concludes by arguing that, like their gifting and social capital counterparts in other countries, successful Guanxi are based on levels of mutuality that are increasingly rare, even in remote rural communities. This means that rather than providing a regulatory check on poor behaviors and practices, traditional Guanxi relationships have the potential to underpin and exacerbate them.

A People’s Writer for Peasant Readers: The Early Reception of Žemaitė’s Writings (1895–1915)

This article investigates the rise of the peasantry as new readers and Lithuanian intellectuals’ reactions to this phenomenon as they took the initiative in directing the peasants’ cultivation as readers. These intellectuals were concerned with the development of the peasants and sought to form their reading habits, influence the readers’ choices as to reading material, and so on. This article goes on to analyze how Žemaitė’s status as a peasant writer was established during her early reception, and how the evaluation of her work depended on the imagined addressee. By analyzing the reviews and broader studies of Žemaitė’s published works in the Lithuanian press from 1895 to 1915, this article aims to show that the formation of the common people as a potential and especially important national reading public was an integral part of her canonization process. Yet another important aim of this research is to reveal how the reception of Žemaitė’s works brought ordinary village peasant onto the horizon of modern Lithuanian culture, and how this became the foundation of one of the new literary styles in Lithuania, namely realism. In this way, by canonizing Žemaitė’s works, the life of village folk became not only visible and recognizable to the Lithuanian reading public, but also came to be regarded as a credible topic for realistic prose.

Suitability of human settlement environment in Buyei traditional villages in rocky desertification area of Guizhou, China.

To investigate the traditional village living environment adaptability to desertification and topography, the suitability evaluation index system and weight of traditional Buyei traditional villages in the rocky desertification area human settlement were quantified using Delphi method and comprehensive weighting method. We calculated human settlements environment suitability value and threshold to comprehensively analyze the human settlements environment suitability. The results showed that 10% of the traditional Buyei traditional villages were located in the rocky desertification areas with high intensity and extremely high intensity and had the tradition of selecting the best environment. The index system of residential environment suitability was composed of five first-level indices (economy, historic culture, ecology, society, and building environment suitability) and 26 second-level indices. This index system was applicable to villages in karst regions. The comprehensive environmental suitability value (2.81-3.77), the economy value (0.77-1.17), the historic culture value (0.39-0.50), the ecology value (0.83-1.07), the social environment value (0.38-0.53) all decreased with the increasing intensity of rocky desertification, but the suitability value of building environment did not change, which ranged from 0.43 to 0.51. Rocky desertification had profound and synergistic impacts on economy, historic culture, ecology and social environment. The floor level of the human settlement suitability threshold was 2.93. If the threshold was lower than 2.93, it could be considered to move or take measures to improve its value. The suitability value (3.56) of traditional village living environment in mountain slope was higher than that in depression (3.42) and valley (3.16). The human settlement suitability of traditional villages in rocky desertification area was higher than that of ordinary villages, but was lower than that of normal landform, with the differences in economy and ecology being the main reasons. To improve the living environment of traditional villages in rocky desertification areas, we should strengthen the comprehensive control of rocky desertification and policy support, develop ecological economy and tourism, protect historic culture or choose ecological migration. This research could provide theoretical base for the planning and construction of village living environment protection in karst areas.