This book is the last work of the author's trilogy on Chinese rural politics. In the background of prominent social conflicts since the 1990s during China's social transformation, the author conducted in-depth comparative analyses of several conflicts to understand the changes in goals, driving forces, and operating systems in the Chinese rural group contentions. His analyses also focused the changes in techniques and strategies of the governments' stability maintenance, as well as the complicated social and political consequences brought by these changes.

This book applies a very unique perspective - "vigor" in the Chinese culture - to understand contemporary rural contentious politics, in an attempt to overcome the problem brought by sense and sensibility and the confrontation between power and morality in the current contentious politics studies. And such a perspective successfully avoids the opposition between the transplanting school and rural school, which pushes forward the frontier of research on contentious political theories and rural societies.

Autorentext
Ying Xing is Professor of Sociology at China University of Political Science and Law. His research interest covers political sociology, social movement, historical sociology and rural study. He is the author of A Story of DaHe Resettlement(2001) and Morality and Power in the Trial History of a Chinese Village:1951-1976(2009).

Inhalt
Acknowledgement.- 1. Introduction.- 2.Vigor in the Scope of Social Activities: from Traditional China to Contemporary China.- 3.The Structural Background of Contemporary China's Contentious Politics: The Cohesion of Vigor.- 4.A Narration of Legal Contention Process.- 5.The Initial Release of Vigor and the Formation of Grassroots Leaders.- 6.The Intensification of Vigor and the Grassroots Participants' Organizational Strategies.- 7.The Action Strategies of Legal Contentions: the Guidance by Vigor.- 8.Group Incidents: from Vigor to Charisma.- 9.The Impact of Contemporary Chinese Contentious Politics.- 10. Summary and Discussion.- Reference .