The modern value of village rules and folk covenants needs to be reunderstood and repositioned

So-called village rules and folk covenants, as the author understands them, are the customary rules of conduct in rural folk society that everyone must abide by. Such rules have a long history; in the Rites of Zhou there were already customary conventions for respecting elders and living in harmony with neighbors in the villages. During the Northern Song dynasty, the "Lu Family Village Covenant" advocated and practiced: encouraging one another in virtue and achievement, admonishing one another against faults, interacting with one another according to ritual and custom, and relieving one another in adversity. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, "village rules" and "community covenants" were formally implemented at the local level. In the course of rural social governance, village rules and folk covenants, through the constraints of moral instruction, ethics, and related punitive mechanisms, maintained the orderly operation of traditional rural society, thereby laying the foundation for the effective maintenance of the entire social order.

In modern society, especially with the rapid development of the networked society, people's values are being influenced and changed. This pluralization of values has accelerated the disintegration of the traditional social structure, and the village rules and folk covenants rooted in the soil of traditional society have also gradually declined. For example, some village rules and folk covenants cannot keep pace with the times and are regarded as old antiques, invisibly reduced to "scarecrows"; for example, in some areas, village rules and folk covenants from other places are copied mechanically, do not fit local realities, and provoke dissatisfaction; in some places, village rules and covenants are simply understood as "punishment first," which violates the original intention of formulating village rules and folk covenants; and some people even one-sidedly believe that a rule-of-law society only needs law to be in charge, and that village rules and covenants are outworn almanacs not worth obeying.

Such an awkward situation is worrying. The author believes that, first, village rules and folk covenants, in their original meaning, advocate "following rules" in the countryside, and such rules are to a certain extent cultivating the "contract spirit" of the rule of law. Obeying village rules and folk covenants is an important measure for cultivating the concept of the rule of law at the grassroots level. Second, under the condition that modern rule-of-law society is not yet maturely developed, village rules and folk covenants, as a kind of folk norm based on the voluntary consensus of villagers, can break through the "vacuum zones" of the rule of law that exist in rural social governance. Third, village rules and folk covenants can use the methods customary among ordinary people to solve new problems in modern society. For example, in some rural communities, the floating population has already exceeded the permanent resident population, and public security is becoming increasingly complex. Those who do not dance square dances cannot stand the noise, and those who have bought cars often block other families' courtyard gates... The new problems that have appeared in the formerly calm society of acquaintances can all be solved by the method of ordinary people "talking things over properly."

From this point of view, in today's era, we need to reunderstand and reposition the modern value of village rules and folk covenants. On the one hand, we should further explore the practical value of village rules and folk covenants in contemporary China's rural social governance, so that they can further play their educational role, guide villagers to comply with the existing rural order, and cultivate villagers' sense of agency, responsibility, and participation; on the other hand, we should explore the modern value of traditional village rules and folk covenants in urban communities. By formulating new street rules and folk covenants, reintegrating activities and interactions between people, and strengthening value identification in a society of strangers, this will help reshape the sense of belonging of urban residents, especially migrant populations.

Of course, while emphasizing the positive significance of village rules and folk covenants, we must also inherit them critically. When rebuilding village rules and folk covenants, we should, on the one hand, draw on the excellent and effective regulatory provisions of traditional village rules and folk covenants, and on the other hand, prudently discard the backward and outdated regulatory content inherent in village rules and folk covenants, absorb the reasonable resources of public practice and folk order, and make them an important foundation supporting the national legal system. Only in this way can we draw abundant positive energy for a rule-of-law China from village rules and folk covenants.