ABSTRACT
FAMILY LABOUR RESOURCES One of the most immediate means available to peasant households to maximise their labour power was to intensify the demands on existing family labour resources and arrange and re-arrange the divisions and distribution of labour within households. The ending of the collective organisation of labour enabled them to do just this, in that it had obvious repercussions for structuring the working day. In the early 1980s villagers repeatedly and quite spontaneously referred to and welcomed the ‘new freedoms ’ or working methods as one of the most important changes in their lives. They contrasted these with previous practices, in which production team leaders had allocated tasks and their work points were
directly dependent on their daily presence in the fields for long, fixed hours whatever the demands of the work. Now peasant households controlled their own production timetables and only worked in the fields when necessary, which left time free for alternative activities. It was certainly evident in conversation and interview that villagers appreciated and enjoyed this new degree of flexibility and control over their own working timetables, although many of them also recognised that what this meant in practice was that they now worked much harder than before. Women, in particular, pointed out that although they had always had to work hard, the recent reforms had made their daily routine even more demanding: ’Though it ’s hard work, we peasant women have been accustomed to work in the fields since we were children. Women continue to undertake field and household work, but we have become even busier in the last two years. ’5 In post-reform village life there is a very new attitude towards time: as a long-time fieldworker in Chinese villages, I have become only too aware that time is now money and that, whereas in the past, I was surrounded by company who were being paid whether they were in the fields or talking to me, now I frequently find myself in an empty village left in the presence of only the very old and the very young unless prior arrangements have been made or cadre and villager anticipated returns for their time.
