ABSTRACT
The peasant experience of reform is rooted in the peasant experience of revolution. To attempt to encapsulate peasant experience of either is a daring act, given both the diverse regions of China and the twists and turns in the policies of each over time. It has become commonplace, in an age of reluctance, to fix definitions and limit categorisations, to emphasise that there is no single representation or overview sufficient to capture the variety of experiences at any one historical moment. Moreover, the very concepts of revolution and reform are now recognised to have a variety of meanings for different persons, platforms and periods and are themselves an acknowledged part of folk and analytic vocabularies of social and cultural construction. As analytic categories, revolution and reform are important and convenient labels for the analysis of certain events, processes and perceptions, but we are now all aware that how these changes are perceived, measured and analysed depends not only on observable alterations in structures, institutions and relations, but also on the interests of the analysts and their ways of seeing and writing!1 Whether the movement from revolution to reform in China is perceived as enlightenment or as betrayal very much depends on the perceptions and point of view of the analyst, which may or may not take account of the perceptions of the participants whose ideas, norms and values, making up constructs of revolution and reform, constitute the essential other voices in the understanding, interpreting and recording of events and experience.2
