“Without the school, the village has no soul”: Rethinking school and socio-cultural resilience in rural China

IF 7 1区 经济学 Q1 DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
Zhenjie Yuan , Yuting Wu , Xinhui Wu
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The physical improvement of rural settlements has increasingly received attention from the government, yet essential social infrastructure within, such as rural schools, often faces the threat of closure, hindering the establishment of a well-functioning rural habitat system. This study rethinks the role of rural schools not merely as educational institutions, but as relational infrastructures that hold potential to sustain socio-cultural resilience in transforming rural China. Drawing on an in-depth ethnographic case study of a historically significant Hakka village in Guangdong Province, the paper introduces the concepts of school-based ties (xueyuan) and village-based ties (xiangyuan) to examine how identity and community are co-produced through both functional practices and symbolic forms. Findings reveal that rural schools play a dual role: providing fundamental functions such as everyday care, educational access, and community interaction, while also serving as symbolic anchors for the community through spatial memory, ritual continuity, and intergenerational narratives. The analysis contributes to the interdisciplinary dialogues in rural resilience, infrastructural geographies, and cultural identity by conceptualising rural schools as dual-track infrastructures of belonging and meaning-making. It further challenges the efficiency-driven logic of school consolidation policies by foregrounding the emotional, symbolic, and relational functions of rural education. As rural settlements confront demographic decline and institutional withdrawal, sustaining such schools may prove pivotal to preserving the cultural fabric and future viability of rural life.
“没有学校,村庄就没有灵魂”:重新思考中国农村的学校与社会文化弹性
农村住区的物质改善日益受到政府的重视,但农村学校等基本社会基础设施往往面临关闭的威胁,阻碍了建立运作良好的农村住区系统。本研究重新思考了农村学校不仅作为教育机构的角色,而且作为关系基础设施,在中国农村转型中保持社会文化弹性的潜力。本文以广东一个具有历史意义的客家村落为研究对象,通过深入的民族志案例研究,引入校本纽带(学缘)和村本纽带(乡缘)的概念,探讨身份与社区如何通过功能实践和符号形式共同产生。研究结果表明,农村学校扮演着双重角色:提供日常护理、教育机会和社区互动等基本功能,同时也通过空间记忆、仪式连续性和代际叙事作为社区的象征性锚点。通过将农村学校概念化为归属和意义创造的双轨基础设施,该分析有助于农村复原力、基础设施地理和文化认同方面的跨学科对话。它通过突出农村教育的情感、象征和关系功能,进一步挑战了学校整合政策的效率驱动逻辑。随着农村住区面临人口减少和机构退出,维持这类学校可能对保护农村生活的文化结构和未来生存能力至关重要。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
10.50
自引率
10.30%
发文量
151
审稿时长
38 days
期刊介绍: Habitat International is dedicated to the study of urban and rural human settlements: their planning, design, production and management. Its main focus is on urbanisation in its broadest sense in the developing world. However, increasingly the interrelationships and linkages between cities and towns in the developing and developed worlds are becoming apparent and solutions to the problems that result are urgently required. The economic, social, technological and political systems of the world are intertwined and changes in one region almost always affect other regions.
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