Sociology and Anthropology in Twentieth-Century China: Between Universalism and Indigenism

13. Narratives of the “Sufferer” as Historical Testimonyi

Chapter 13 Narratives of the “Sufferer” as Historical Testimonyi Guo Yuhua This chapter begins with an analysis of the social roots and social character of suffering, and explores the question of how peasants’ narratives of their experiences become history. Narratives of personal histories of “bitterness” told by peasants who refer to themselves as “sufferers” (shouku ren 受苦人) occupy a significant place in oral accounts of rural life in China in the second half of the twentieth century. They constitute both an important academic resource and an independent field of knowledge production. The social dimensions of “suffering” establish an organic link between the everyday lives of ordinary people and broader social history, such that the deep roots of “suffering” can only be apprehended from the perspective of social structures and power relationships. Seeing the everyday practices of ordinary peasants as an integral part of “civilisation ” links peasants’ life histories with the macro processes of social history. It gives the mundane, even trivial, experiences and accounts of peasants’ lives an extraordinary significance as organic components of the grand historical narrative. Reflecting on peasants’ everyday lives as part of this broader process also makes an important contribution to discussions of interdisciplinary methodology.ii i This essay is part of the introduction to a work in process, which I am writing on the basis of about ten years of conducting oral history research in Ji village, northern Shaanxi. I have had rich exchanges with Sun Liping 孫立平 and Shen Yuan 沈原 during and since the course of this fieldwork; my thanks to them for their many valuable ideas. Thanks also to Prof. Harriet Evans for translating the paper into English. ii In Chinese, the different words for “suffering” are often used interchangeably. However, there are some slight distinctions between them. Ku’nan 苦難 generally refers to suffering and disasters that are large-scale, social, and common or universal; tongku 痛苦 emphasizes feelings (ganjue 感覺) towards and about suffering, including bodily and emotional experiences; jiku 疾苦 mostly refers to bodily suffering and sickness. 334 · Guo Yuhua In 1993, one of the world’s greatest thinkers, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, produced La misere du monde, in which he examined the diverse everyday sufferings of ordinary people in contemporary society. In 1999, this large-scale investigation of social suffering appeared in English as The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society. Over three years, Bourdieu and his twenty-two researchers carried out interviews mainly with ordinary people of low social status, including migrants, unemployed workers, the homeless, female employees, laid-off company directors, peasants and farmers, high school students, temporary workers, foremen, street drifters, small managers, social workers, police, and so on, to reveal life trajectories, stories, and experiences of suffering through an “exploratory examination of social suffering, painful circumstances, and dissatisfactions and complaints that are difficult to articulate.”1 Bourdieu and his collaborators’ work in listening to these people’s stories and entering their lives can be seen as a fulfilment of the sociologist ’s political and moral mission—to reveal the deep roots of the social suffering of ordinary people. The Social Character and Roots of “Suffering” Suffering as Social Fact Bourdieu and his colleagues’ research for The Weight of the World began with individual interviews about everyday life. Through numerous and apparently trivial accounts of suffering, the researchers used their imagination and sensitivity to discover the complex nexus linking individual conditions and structural transformations of society, and thus tried to transcend the binary opposition between micro and macro characterising conventional social science research. For example, a comparison of interviews with young temporary workers and the “old guys” at a Peugeot plant revealed that the differences between them were not only generational but included a series of structural differences in social position, labour relations, personal experience, and political attitude (for example towards strikes). The formal distance between the two generations of workers depicted the profound transformation of the working class coming, as it were, to “the end of a world.”2 Interviews with ordinary state workers and social workers demonstrated that difficulties at work stemmed from the “inertia of a fragmented and fragmenting Narratives of the “Sufferer” as Historical Testimony · 335 administration” in which workers possessed no more than symbolic resources—for example, the capacity to get on well with neighbours, trustworthiness and advice—but lacked public resources and a systematic foundation. With no alternative but to struggle between the onerous and endless tasks the state assigned...