A Peasant or Not? A Test of Chinese Rural Laborers’ Identity status and Their Cultivated Land
Zhang Jie （ State University of New York Buffalo State University ）
Cai Guangqian （ Central University of Finance and Economics School of Sociology and Psychology, Beijing, China ）
Abstract
Background: Urbanization was intended to lead to comprehensive city development. Peasant laborers must achieve psychological and social adaptation to realize individual urbanization.
Aims: The aim of this paper is to identify the factors affecting identity status among Chinese rural laborers.
Methods: Survey data for this paper, entitled Survey Data of Rural Laborers in the Pearl River Delta in 2006, were obtained from the Center for Social Survey, Sun Yat-sen University. Multinomial logistic regression was used to test the data. Retaining cultivated land and self-meaning constituted self-reported items. Independent variables included three identity statuses for rural laborers.
Results: Age and self-meaning variables were not significantly associated with identity status. Another dependent variable involved retaining cultivated land, which was significantly associated with identity status.
Conclusions: A lower level of identity status was related to satisfaction of self-meaning, whereas a strong relationship was found between identity status and cultivated land. Chinese peasants appeared to emphasize the meaning of cultivated land as the cornerstone of life in their agricultural civilization in the past as well as in modern society.
Keywords
Rural laborers; Identity status; Cultivated landFull Text
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Copyright © 2024 Zhang Jie , Cai Guangqian, Dwight A. Henness.
Publishing time:2024-02-29
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
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