This dissertation is a study of the consequences of decollectivization (1978-1984) in rural China, a fundamental institutitional change that replaced Maoist collective economy with the Household Responsibility System, for the conditions of Chinese rural poverty. It first examines how decollectivization reshaped the spheres of prodution, exchange and distribution in Chinese rural economy, and discovers that it produced some adverse impacts on poverty reduction in rural China. The author then conducts a critical evaluation of official rural poverty statistics and reestimates the post-1978 Chinese rural poverty reduction performance. The results show that Chinese rural poverty might not have been reduced by much, or even worse, might well have increased since decollectivization. The research findings presented in this dissertation challenge the conventional wisdom that decollectization made a great contribution to poverty reduction in rural China. This dissertation study has an implication for poverty studies: institutional changes that seem to work well in generating economic growth may not work for promoting poverty reduction.

The Imperial University played a significant political role in China’s imperial past. When established in the ancient Zhou, its mission was predominantly to nurture prospective officials for eventual service in government. This marks the inseparability of education and politics from the very onset of the University’s founding. Nevertheless, its diminished success in producing officials under subsequent dynasties caused a comparable diminution in the political significance of the metropolitan school. Not until the Northern Song, founded by the Zhao clan, did signs emerge of a resurrection of sorts. Three major educational reforms were attempted in the reigns of Renzong, Shenzong, and Huizong (ca. 1040-1126). In each reform, the emperor and the reform proponents envisioned an expanding role of political significance for the Imperial University. This dissertation focuses on the evolution of the metropolitan educational institutions, namely the Directorate of Education and the Imperial University, in the Northern Song. By investigating the record of conduct and extant writings as pertains to the institutional settings of the Imperial University as well as wide range of biographical sources for Northern Song men, mainly staff, students, and graduates of the Imperial University, the author seeks to gain insights into how Song emperors and policy advocates perceived the Imperial University as a political institution, how the staff and teachers at the University performed their assigned roles, and how students and graduates of the Northern Song Imperial University contributed to the political life. After highlighting the role of the Imperial University in the previous dynasties, reviewing the secondary literatures in connection with education in Song China, as well as illustrating the sources and methodology to be used in the introductory chapter, a comprehensive survey of the development of the metropolitan schools covering the entire Northern Song then follows. This narrative history not only highlights the innovations in the educational institutions per se, but also sheds light on a range of political phenomena during various stages in the Northern Song: how aristocracy evolved into meritocracy; how the reformers and conservatives created myths for political sake; how emperor Shenzong strengthened its autocratic rule by way of a comprehensive regulatory framework; how scholar-officials rebuffed in defending the “genealogy of the way”; and how the scholarly vision in recruiting officials through a countrywide school network was realized. The conclusion contains an analytical discussion of the political role of the Imperial University in late Northern Song: a tool of control and indoctrination, as well as a channel to select morally upright officials. The central issue is how successful could the Directorate of Education and the Imperial University perform these political functions. Through this study, hopefully a fuller picture of this elitist educational institution during one of its most flourishing periods in Imperial China can be restored. It is also envisioned that the political impact could be re-emphasized in future studies of political institutions, a perspective which has often been ignored in recent Chinese and Western scholarships where social history is dominant.

While community-based natural resource management projects have acquired increasing importance in the last decade, the notion of ‘community’ that is implicit in them has been subject to critique on a number of grounds. It is this that forms the starting point for my dissertation. This dissertation starts by discussing the diverse forms that ‘the community’ takes in three different water projects in the state of Maharashtra in western India. For instance, the community could be either an administrative unit or an ecological unit or an irrigation unit, and each of these has different equity and sustainability implications. The three cases also differ in the kind of internal characteristics they possess and how these contribute to decentralized sustainable development. Furthermore, while reified notions of the community serve a strategic purpose in one water project, in general, utopian notions of communities could lead to lack of acknowledgement of the interaction between the community and other institutions such as markets, with the result that an important arena of influencing equity is lost. Secondly, a study of three kinds of equities within the three communities—equities in rule content, process of rule-making and outcomes, reveals that the redistributive potential of water is realized only to a limited extent. The different equities are inter-related and depend on a variety of factors such as ideological motivation of the actors, the kind of water source, the prior internal organization present, the legal validity of the institutional arrangements and the nature of the leadership. Equity in content is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for equity in outcome. But equity in rule-making is the most critical—it is needed for implementation, to ensure continued equity in content and outcome, and to provide flexibility to use unexpected opportunities for changes in equity. Thirdly, I discuss the role that the state can play in further facilitating community-based sustainable development efforts. For instance, the state can use legislation for a clearer constitution of the unit of the community, as well as facilitate equity by influencing the decision-making rules that associations involved in water projects follow.

The 20th Century saw dramatic agrarian changes among third world countries. In many countries, the agrarian relations tended to be peasant-oriented at first, and then started favoring capital and landlord in the recent decades. In this dissertation, I explored the historical conditions and consequences of these profound changes, in particular focusing on the history of rural collectives and decollectivization in China. My findings differ from the existing literature in the following aspects. First, the literature argues that the Chinese rural collectives suffered from inefficiency and the decollectivization reform greatly improved agricultural productivity. My research shows that the previous studies suffer from a number of serious logical and/or methodological problems. After adjusting some data misusage, my results suggest that decollectivization did not increase productivity. I also construct an index of the legacy from the commune era to evaluate the long run impacts from the socialist period on agricultural productivity. The empirical results suggest that the provinces with higher socialist legacy tend to have higher agricultural productivity growth rates even after decollectivization. Second, the mainstream history suggests that due to their dissatisfaction with the rural regime, the peasants spontaneously organized and collectively dismantled the collective system. My research shows that the government was enthusiastic rather than passive in promoting the household model. The cadres who did not follow the orders from the central leadership would face immense political pressure. The mainstream view holds that those people who opposed decollectivization were local cadres who were afraid of losing control. But my research suggests that the cadres and a small part of peasants implemented and benefitted from the reform while the normal peasants were not enthusiastic and even opposed decollectivization in some cases. Moreover, my fieldwork suggests that many rural collectives experienced work avoidance and inefficiency, not because of egalitarianism but stratification (which basically means a cadre-peasant/manger-worker divide). The demise of rural collectives was mostly due to political pressure from the government. But the stratification contributed to peasants' passiveness in resisting the institutional change.

This dissertation attempts to open up new possibilities in the interpretation of Liaozhai Zhiyi sk45, the criticism of which in the past four decades has been predominantly political (Marxist) and biographical. My interpretation of Liaozhai draws on four psychoanalytic theories: Freudian (also ego psychology), Jungian, feminist and Winnicottian. In chapters two through six, my discussion of thirty-three full-length Liaozhai stories is guided by Jung's conceptualization of the collective unconscious and the individuation process. The intricate and dynamic relations between human and supernatural characters are reimagined as those between the conscious mind and a group of Jungian archetypes (the shadow, the anima, the mother, etc.). In chapter seven, my discussion of "Feng Sanniang" sk45, a unique Liaozhai story in which a young woman is helped in magic ways by a female fox spirit, questions Jung's animus archetype. My interpretation of it draws on Nancy Chodorow's theory on the development of the feminine psyche in relation to the preoedipal and oedipal mothers and the oedipal father. Next, my reading of several Liaozhai stories emphasizes a hidden theme (male Oedipus complex) and some defense maneuvers (splitting, displacement, projection, regression, denial, sublimation, etc.). Finally my interpretation of "Yingning" sk45 is guided by Winnicott's theorizing of what happens between self and other in infancy. Instead of fragmenting the story, this reading brings all characters into comparison and sheds light on otherwise puzzling descriptions. With this example, I try to demonstrate that the psychoanalytic approach tends to require the critic to treat a literary work as an organic whole and examine details of the language to look for a convergence of themes. In my dissertation I argue that fantasy allows Pu Songling sk30 freedom to explore and portray what was repressed socially, personally and politically. The stories may be perceived as dreamwork to illustrate and resolve problems of the self, and psychoanalytic approaches may reveal symbols, paradoxes, recurring themes and unconscious fantasies which are embedded in the texts and so far have not been adequately explored.

Despite the rich history of gang research in the United States, Asian gangs remain arelatively understudied group. While early investigations have teased out factors associated withentry and exit among these individuals, the vast majority of these accounts focused specificallyon Chinese and Vietnamese gang members in California and New York. Consequently, it isunclear whether these findings hold true for Asian gang members residing in other states and ofdifferent ethnic background, such as the Hmong (a highland tribal people from the mountains ofLaos). In an effort to address this empirical gap, this study relied on life-history interviews andethnographic observations with 34 current and former Hmong gang members from California,Minnesota, and Wisconsin to uncover the motivations and methods associated with entry,persistence, and exit. Overall, findings mirrored much of what has been documented amongother racial and ethnic gangs; that is, participants expressed similar reasons for joining, staying,and leaving. However, findings also indicated that Hmong gang members demonstrate a greaterand more genuine level of bonding—an observation that has also been noted among Vietnamesegang members. Moreover, there was evidence of geographic variations associated with joiningand staying between California and Wisconsin participants. In an effort to theoreticallycontextualize participants’ experiences (i.e. entry, persistence, and exit), this study utilized asymbolic interactionist framework—social structures, meaning-making, and identity—given itsemergence through the modified grounded theory approach to data collection and analysis. As aresult of these efforts, several theoretical and policy implications emerged and were discussed.

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