Contentious politics in rural China

books:


	• Rightful Resistance in Rural China (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics) Kevin J. O'Brien, Lianjiang Li Cambridge University Press, 2006 - 200 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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Contentious politics in rural China

This short book lays out, conceptually, what kind of contentious politics "Rightful Resistance" is and where in the literature its place should be.
Rightful Resistance is somewhere between James Scott's "everyday forms of resistance," on the one hand, and the sustained nature implied in Charles Tilly's notion that social movements are "campaigns." "Unlike rebels in the name of the tsar, rightful resisters stop short of violence...[but] they have learned how to exploit the potent symbolic and material capital made available by modern states. Rightful resistance is thus a product of state building and of opportunities created by the spread of participatory ideologies and patters of rule rooted in notions of equality, rights, and rule of law" (pg. 4). China's agricultural reforms in the late twentieth-century (e.g. Organic Law of Villagers' Committees 1987) have created opportunities for the peasants that did not permeate down to the peasants for those in James Scott's study of Sedaka in "Weapons of the Weak." Instead, in China, "contractual ways of thinking and a growing fluency in rights talk appear to underlie much of rightful resistance present in rural China" (pg. 6). Rights-talk is part of the repertoire that rightful resisters use against the local cadre who cause the problems of practical application of party ideals. Part of why Rightful Resistance is not a social movement is because it lacks sustainability insofar as the goals of these peasant resisters remain only to change some local and practical discrepancy between party promises and cadre implementations. "Rightful resisters know that they exist at the sufferance of higher levels and that the `rights' they act on are conditional. Unlike the rights of discourse employed by some liberal intellectuals, there is little evidence that most of rightful resisters consider rights to be inherent, natural, or inalienable; nor do most of them break with the common Chinese practice of viewing rights as granted by the state mainly for societal purposes rather than to protest an individual's autonomous being...rather that the government's right to loyalty depends on ensuring that its officials [local cadres] fulfill their obligations" (pg. 122). Applying the concept of "cognitive liberation" from Doug McAdam, to rural China: "we should not underestimate the implications of rising rights consciousness and a growing fluency in `rights talk' in a nation where rights have traditionally been weakly protected. Thanks in part to the spread of rightful resistance, terms such as `rights defense' (weiquan) have gained acceptance in reform minded journals and adventurous newspapers and, more gradually, in the mainstream press" (pg. 127).

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How can the poor and weak 'work' a political system to their advantage? Drawing mainly on interviews and surveys in rural China, Kevin O'Brien and Lianjiang Li show that popular action often hinges on locating and exploiting divisions within the state. Otherwise powerless people use the rhetoric and commitments of the central government to try to fight misconduct by local officials, open up clogged channels of participation, and push back the frontiers of the permissible. This 'rightful resistance' has far-reaching implications for our understanding of contentious politics. As O'Brien and Li explore the origins, dynamics, and consequences of rightful resistance, they highlight similarities between collective action in places as varied as China, the former East Germany, and the United States, while suggesting how Chinese experiences speak to issues such as opportunities to protest, claims radicalization, tactical innovation, and the outcomes of contention.

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