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We examine overarching themes in the contributions, including critiques of neo-liberalism, rural-urban linkages, the relevance of mixed methods and cross-disciplinary approaches, the need to engage social theory, and variation across space and time. At the same time, we provide an overview of rural Chinese politics and explain that the goal of the collection was to bring findings that have appeared in area studies or disciplinary outlets into conversation with peasant studies research. After discussing intellectual debates about the peasantry, everyday practices of governance, contentious politics, the mutual constitution of the rural and urban, and environmental politics, we conclude that work on the Chinese countryside needs 'lumping' (to discover unexpected similarities) and 'splitting' (to uncover patterns and forks in the road). Chinese rural politics is neither 'turtles all the way down' and baffling complexity, nor one master story that applies in all times and places. Instead we must continue to navigate the path between exoticizing China and treating its rural transformation as a tale many times told. © 2013 © 2013 Taylor & Francis.

Over the past 30 years in China, the development ideology--a model of economic development that is characterized by urbanization, industrialization, and modernization--has brought about many changes and consequences, including increased migration by the rural population, sharp adjustments in urban-rural education policy, the decline of rural society, and a deteriorating educational context facing rural left-behind children. At the family level, labor force migrations have had a far-reaching impact on left-behind children. At the school level, the decline of rural education and urbanization trend have derailed the healthy development of left-behind children. At the community level, the deterioration of rural values amid rapid urban-rural changes has aggravated the developmental risks facing left-behind children. Among rural left-behind children, those who are older (post-compulsory schooling age) and girls, and from poverty-stricken backgrounds face more developmental risks. The authors take into consideration empirical research from regions such as Sichuan and Henan, provide an account of the educational and developmental challenges facing rural left-behind children, and reflect on the developmentalist ideology underlying societal changes. [This article was translated by Jeff Keller.]

Poverty alleviation through industrial development in China contributes to the long-standing debate on how the poor could benefit from the development. It creates four industrial organizing approaches (i.e. households operating independently, intermediary organizations providing linkages, modern enterprise leading and asset income distribution) and three ways of participation for the rural poor (i.e. participating as petty commodity producers, wage workers and shareholders), in which productivity has been improved and production relations adjusted. While highlighting the specificity of China's situation, this paper argues for the more general implications of China's case for other developing countries due to its theoretical hybridity in addressing poverty alleviation and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how newly constructed peasant markets are increasingly extending beyond the boundaries (and limits) of the local. This brings their new potentials in relevance and transformativity. The paper includes a comprehensive definition of peasant markets. It is also meant as a reply to those who argue that capitalism cannot be fought by using one of its main mechanisms: 'the market'. By presenting three case studies that describe different peasant markets, the paper argues that while markets are increasingly governed by large imperial networks, peasant markets are emerging as major vehicles of, and for, transformative struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Welfare for the disabled is becoming an important issue in China and care for people with intellectual disability is challenging because of the inadequacies in formal support and the social service system. Material and Method: Based on ethnographic research in two villages in North China, this paper analyses the dilemmas of family care for people with intellectual disability. The essential data is the ethnographic record of three cases. Results: Rural families strive to provide care through a set of arrangements and bear tremendous stress in the process. Conclusion: Family care for people with intellectual disability in rural China has been increasingly challenged by the forces of labour migration, demographic changes and the ever-growing processes of commoditization. The role of the state has to be strengthened in welfare provision to balance the weakened family care ethos in transforming societies.

The metabolic rifts resulted from the rural urban divide and agricultural commodification require remedy with synthetic fertilizers, multiple labour practices and other methods of repair in urbanizing China. The case study in North China shows that the metabolic rift unfolds in an uneven way in different farmer groups with differential labour patterns and livelihood strategies. Simple commodity producers have generally greater potential than capitalized family farmers to ameliorate soil by internalizing external squeeze. This implies contradictory processes and a complex dialectic of destruction and replenishment which makes soil a site of struggle and metabolic rift an increasingly ambivalent notion. This contradiction between intensive 'modern agriculture' and its complex material base will ultimately limit the sustainable development of agriculture, which requires a fundamental change of the productivist paradigm and a return to ecological principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The commonplace notion of extractivism relates to the production of value through physically extractive processes (mining, oil extraction, certain kinds of agriculture, etc.) where value generation is necessarily temporary and generally followed by barrenness and an inability to sustainably reproduce livelihoods in the affected habitat. In this article we aim to rethink extractivism in more general, politico-economic terms, i.e. as a particular way of structuring the processes of production and reproduction. This allows us to ask if extractivism is limited to the sectors mentioned above or a pattern that could, actually or potentially, emerge in other sectors of the economy. This paper also aims to contribute to the debate on the rise, and current problems, of emerging economies and how they relate to global capitalism. It develops the hypothesis that at least some of the BRICS countries have operated as laboratories in which extractivism has been developed into a wider politico-economic system that is now also being applied outside the BRICS countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]