Preface to A Collection of Grassroots Rural Field Surveys: Pathways Toward Thickened Agricultural Development
Right now, in early summer in June, the Summer Cultivation collection is about to be published, and our young partners are busily preparing the fourth Summer Cultivation grassroots survey. For four years running, we have held camps of over a hundred people in farming villages, visited eight to ten villages, and stepped into dozens of farm households, coming to know and understand the realities these farming villages face and how they rise up amid hardship. This is no easy task. After more than half a year of preparation and organizing communities that differ from place to place, we have gained a great deal from it all.
This little book is the third collection of writings from the Summer Cultivation survey. In its pages you can see the accumulation of sustained commitment: in Dananpu, the survey, through the involvement of local youth Xingwei and friends, has gradually worked its way into the fabric of the farming village; in Meinong, the survey, with the companionship of local organizers Zhongliang and Yiting and their dense discussions, has let us experience the social nature of labor by measuring it against our own bodies; in Qubing, the survey, through Cihui's introduction and planning, has revealed a side of indigenous farming village production and marketing that goes undiscussed. It is through this bit-by-bit accumulation, through this capturing of the contours of the times from within, that the Summer Cultivation collection has a chance to break free from youthful romantic musings and confront head-on the past this land has endured.
Although we have not done enough, whether we can make any progress in practice, whether we can respond to the reality of today's farming villages, perhaps lies in grounded, plain-hearted investigation rooted in the land. As Teacher Li Dingzan reminds us: "On the wasteland, we awaken!"
The happiness of working alongside young people perhaps lies in the fact that the ways and habits our generation follows are constantly discussed, questioned, or even overturned; the emotion of working alongside young people perhaps lies in the fact that the links where we once failed to understand, doubted, or even made mistakes seem always hard to avoid. At this moment, as the 2011 Summer Cultivation collection is about to be published, I look at the writing of my young partners, heavy or light, and their visions, near or far; I think of the footsteps they have taken over the past three years and the burdens they have shouldered, and beyond joy and gratitude, perhaps we still need to discuss certain difficult problems - problems that we and our young partners must face and solve together.
And now, we must admit that in this world, human feelings and affairs always inevitably advance or retreat, quicken or slow, and in that coming and going people come to understand, to grow richer, to become more substantial, or to flee. This is my initial impression of
The Insider and Outsider of the Farming Village
I remember that in October 2011 we held a Young Seedlings presentation event in Tucheng, where our young partners presented their first drafts. They spoke eagerly about their learning experiences and participation in the farming village, and inadvertently revealed a certain perspective: quite a few of them had clearly already come to see "the farming village as elsewhere." How different this perspective is from that of our generation! For me, born in the 1970s, and for most people of greater age, the farming village is home; but for young partners born in the 1980s and 1990s, the farming village is elsewhere. This perspective of elsewhere makes most of the articles plainly present a beauty born of unfamiliarity, a touch born of understanding, and a distance born of elsewhereness. These qualities of beauty, touch, and distance can, with a single misstep, make one fall into the self-limitation of the outsider.
This short essay cannot address all the debates over insider and outsider, subject and object, the epistemological level, and the choice of intervention. I only want to remind us that if one positions oneself as an outsider, one's view of the farming village will likely be either too romantic or too detached. This perspective of standing outside the farming village happens to be exactly the link in our long-term self-criticism and constant reflection for which we still have no concrete answer today. If the perspective of our young partners once again displays this unconscious yet taken-for-granted way of seeing, how should we converse with it? Or is the answer not in the dimension of dialogue at all?
Perhaps only by acting directly in the face of reality is there a chance to cross the limits of the outsider and realize a relative subjectivity. I have always believed that people must be inside it; entering the village is not merely a spatial displacement, but also the rolling up of social relations. Over the past several years, many partners who have participated in Summer Cultivation have gone directly into rural villages - for example, independently returning home to establish the Dananpu Rural Office; going to work at the Xizhou Township Office in Changhua, devoting themselves to supplying local ingredients to kindergartens; and several young people, through the guidance and recommendation of Lai Qingsong in Yilan, cultivating two fen of land from nothing, reviving the ancient farming of rice and naming it "Yilan Xiaotiantian," bringing a farming practice that belongs to the younger generation.
Of course, the sustained involvement in the Bending-Over Farmers' Market and the preparation of the Summer Cultivation survey camps are all, and inevitably, part of the process by which young partners continue to become entangled in farming villages and real social relations. Of course, we must also be mindful that even the smallest involvement is connected to dense local human relationships; it is precisely the inspiration of local human relationships that supports young people's practice of entering the village. Why do we so repeatedly emphasize the importance of involvement in social relations? For no other reason than that "practice" has no possibility of standing outside society. We hope our young partners will understand, face, and intervene in social reality.
The Opposition Between City and Countryside and Their Mutual Support and Dependence
The binary opposition between city and countryside is undoubtedly spatial, and at the same time a reproduction of relations of production. These clearest feelings are vividly reflected in the writing of our young partners, and precisely because the feelings are so concrete, the writing appears absolute. But must city and countryside necessarily oppose each other? Are they not mutually supporting and mutually dependent? When we face the farming village anew and expound the meaning of farming, it is not to negate another form of social formation, but to see through and identify the hidden framework structures within it, and thereby think through the key nodes and intervene in change with our feet on the ground. Thinking that is too binary helps settle temporary doubts; but if one stops there, it will not help deepen action in reality.
To understand why this phenomenon arises, perhaps we must return to the Summer Cultivation grassroots survey - to the investment that spans an entire summer vacation. The form of Summer Cultivation includes learning and debate during the camp, the curiosity and breakthroughs of the survey, and the drill of labor, which then turns into written output and is further polished into this collection. Three stages of survey are long for most summer camps, yet to truly face the farming village, they still seem so short. Thus young partners participating in Summer Cultivation often write before they have had time to reflect on the impact brought by direct observation and firsthand experience. Still, we also see many pieces here that have clearly gone through a good deal of struggle, rich in both substance and style, substantial and powerful; but on closer inquiry one finds that if during the survey process there had been someone with deeper ties to the local historical context and more experience to accompany and guide them, it would have brought more discussion and dialogue, and the results would have been more substantial.
It is not that we must have a formal course of study like academic education - as most of us in the humanities and social sciences do, going through the recognition of paradigms, the discipline of research methods, and the analysis of social phenomena, thereby finding concepts and theories to engage in dialogue with; rather, Summer Cultivation as a summer camp is rich, but as an interface for understanding rural villages, it clearly should further summarize and analyze its formal limitations, and on the basis of past experience and unfinished matters, find methods that combine direct observation, labor experience, and social action.
As a preface, this seems to reflect too much and recommend too little. Perhaps this is my reflection looking back on the past four years of Summer Cultivation, but that should not obstruct the praise this collection deserves. From whatever angle, the writing collected here is sincere, substantial, and interesting. Open it and read it closely, and as you close the book you may perhaps find your former self.
(The author is a spokesperson for the Taiwan Rural Front)
Price: 350 yuan
ISBN: 978-986-03-3041-0
To order, please go to the Taiwan Rural Front website: http://www.taiwanruralfront.org/node/158
"On the wasteland, we awaken";
Get your feet wet, and walk the substantial road
-- This book is dedicated to the rural villages and farmers of Taiwan, China, and to all rural activists who have set out on their way