Sources of Conflict in Rural China
11:00 a.m., Friday, Nov. 16, 2007
Webster Hall Auditorium
Admission: free

Media reports abound of the growing volume and intensity of conflict in China. In recent years excessive taxation, “land grabs,” and the enforcement of family planning policies have produced and aggravated conflict in the Chinese countryside. Although they are important sources of conflict, Professor Michelson will show that these reasons cannot completely explain why some areas of China are more conflict-ridden than others. Villagers in different parts of China have responded very differently to similar objective social and economic conditions. He will use the extraordinary case of southeast Henan Province to illustrate the importance of memories of past trauma. In particular, a series of traumatic events — namely, the Great Leap Famine (1959-61), the Zhumadian flood (1975), and the HIV/AIDS epidemic (mid 1990s-present) — have taught villagers in southeast Henan to distrust local government. Compared to villagers in other parts of China with even heavier tax burdens and even less favorable economic conditions, villagers here, owing to their memories of these large-scale disasters, have been exceptionally aggressive, litigious, and disobedient.

Dr. Ethan Michelson is an assistant professor of sociology and east Asian languages and cultures at Indiana University-Bloomington. His research on Chinese lawyers, grievances and disputing in rural China, and newspaper legal advice columns in urban China has been published in the top journals in his fields, including the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, The China Quarterly, and Social Problems. He has an M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago.