The social economy of new rural reconstruction

The social economy of new rural reconstruction

Pan Jia'en& DU Jie  

China Journal of Social Work， Volume 4, 2011 - Issue 3: Social Economy in Chinese Societies

To link to this article:htti://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17525098.2011.615385

ABSTRACT：

This paper employs the concept of ‘social economy’ to reflect on the authors' experiences in rural reconstruction efforts in Mainland China, including work on peasant cooperatives and community-supported agriculture. In practice, the social and the economic can never be clearly separated. Economic problems, which may superficially appear to be independent, are in fact over-determined by all kinds of social and cultural factors, so a holistic perspective of ‘social economy’ is needed to re-embed the economic into its social context. Such a perspective can help expand the space of our practice and reflection thereon, in particular helping practitioners to understand the difficulties encountered in rural reconstruction.