From the Soil (or "Rural China"): Reconstruction of Rural China

In the mid-to-late 1940s, Fei Xiaotong's academic work shifted from empirical community studies to exploring the overall form of Chinese social structure. He considered his discussions on differential mode of association and rural China to be the main achievements of this period.
"From the Soil" is a collection of lectures Fei Xiaotong gave on rural sociology at Southwest Associated University and Yunnan University, attempting to answer what kind of society rural China, as a grassroots society, truly is. It is not a description of a specific society, but rather extracts some ideal-type concepts from it, such as differential mode of association, ritual rule, and elder governance, in order to construct a unique operational system that has long influenced and dominated rural Chinese society, and thereby to understand specific rural societies.
"Reconstruction in Rural China" takes the differential mode of association and the relationship between imperial power and gentry power as the basic structural principles of Chinese society. On this basis, it analyzes the problems and dilemmas of contemporary grassroots Chinese society, exploring new forms of rural industry and the possibility of modern social transformation through rural reconstruction. This series of writings represents Fei Xiaotong's holistic concern for Chinese history, tradition, and contemporary reality in the late 1940s, and is the most important result of his thinking in this *stage* of his academic life.