ABSTRACT

The dispute left its mark on the intellectual content of the field, on relations among scholars engaged in studying the countryside, and on the structure of the profession. One of the most important effects of the controversy was the substantial narrowing of the content of rural social studies. The controversy strained relations, both intellectual and social, among rural scholars. The assessment of the relation between the period of controversy and the period of Cultural Revolution in the field of rural social studies is not a simple matter. The Party's patent disenchantment with the individual farm sector and its concomitant emphasis on the creation of large-scale socialist units brought to the fore the two groups' differences of opinion over the nature of the family farm. The historical record shows clearly that shortly after the dispute in rural social studies came to an end, the community of rural scholars was rent asunder.