Lost and FoundPub Date : 2019-07-18DOI: 10.1093/OSO/9780190917425.003.0005
J. Kennedy, Yaojiang Shi
{"title":"Villagers, Daughters, and the Voices of the “Missing”","authors":"J. Kennedy, Yaojiang Shi","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780190917425.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780190917425.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"The general assumption has been that rural residents prefer sons and that under the single child policy and cultural constraints, daughters are valued less. This desire is assumed to be based on a traditional preference for sons and a virilocal marriage system that goes back more than a millennium. Given this cultural assumption and the central government’s push for birth control, a number of journalists and scholars have suggested that villagers hold continuous and unchanging attitudes toward daughters. However, national surveys and local interviews suggest that the value of daughters has changed over the last 30 years, with equal preference for sons and daughters increasing. As a result, mutual noncompliance and the change in rural attitudes has contributed to a greater number of hidden girls than previous studies have suggested.","PeriodicalId":118394,"journal":{"name":"Lost and Found","volume":"508 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129257001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lost and FoundPub Date : 2019-06-20DOI: 10.1093/OSO/9780190917425.003.0001
J. Kennedy, Yaojiang Shi
{"title":"Street-Level Birth Control and Mutual Noncompliance","authors":"J. Kennedy, Yaojiang Shi","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780190917425.003.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780190917425.003.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Contradictions between central policy goals and local interests can be resolved through cadres’ mediation at the village level. Village leaders act as mediators between central policy directives and rural residents. This compromise is attributable to the level of autonomy that village cadres enjoy, which affords them some discretion in the implementation of policies and regulations. The theory of the street-level bureaucrat explains how local cadres, at both the village and town levels, from the 1980s to the early 2000s, were able to use underreporting of out-of-plan births to mediate the conflicts between central policy goals and local interests. Underreporting goes beyond selective policy implementation and is a result of mutual noncompliance between villagers and cadres. One of the long-term implications of current changes in demographics is that as more rural residents permanently migrate to urban areas, the village community structure that allowed cadres to mediate between central policy and local interests may be disappearing.","PeriodicalId":118394,"journal":{"name":"Lost and Found","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130451305","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}