1950년대 北京市 基層의 ‘街道 積極分子’ ― 實態와 變化 ―

Abstract

This article surveys the street activists (jiedao jijifenzi) who played the role of intermediation between state and society in Beijing, focusing on the change of governmental policies toward them, their composition, and their work attitude (zuofeng) throughout the 1950s. For the first three to four years, a period of disorder (wenluan), Beijing municipality had intention to implement numerous street works establishing and mobilizing a variety of mass organizations without inputting limited resources to the street, the lowest level of administration. The activists taking responsibilities of such mass organizations were largely selected and designated to the post of chairman, committee member, and team leader by the government. Though the disorder was inevitable, the first period saw invariable characteristics in the activists’ attitude: their self-motivation and housewives’ activism. For the second period ranging from 1954 to 1957, the new ‘neighborhood space’ was created in the street level with the establishment of Residents’ Committee merging the existing mass organizations. This production of neighborhood spaces contributed to the enhancement of communitarian solidarity, sociability, and voluntarism. The activists assuming the responsibilities of the Committee were elected by the residents. The introduction of election system resulted in the closer linkage between the activists and the residents and triggered more activism of the activists than ever. The urban ‘governance’ at the grassroots for this period was based on the activists’ devotion to the neighborhood community. After the second half of 1957, the third period, the socialist education movement with “free speech and great debates” (daming, dafang, dabianlun), accompanying with coercive intervention of party-state power into the neighborhood spaces, caused distortion of urban governance. The activists were purified (chunjie) due to their class position and political attitude. The organization of people’s economic life (renmin jingji shenghuo de zuzhihua) launched from 1958 with the Great Leap Forward Movement replaced the existing activists by those who had ‘labor class’ status without considering their work competence. The larger part of activists came to have inimical emotion (dichu qingxu) showing passive, cynic, and evasive attitudes toward the state’s unilateral initiatives. State-society governance at the grassroots in 1950s (before 1958) could operate on the basis of the street activists’ voluntarism and activism. The patron-client relations that Andrew Walder found in his studies on the workplace in Danwei system is not applicable to the neighborhood spaces. The motivation with which the street activists charged burdensome street works did not originate form material interests or career promotion given by the state, but their strong sense of service to community.