In the study of contemporary Chinese history, the excavation and organization of rural grassroots archives not only broaden the scope and content of historical inquiry but also contribute to the refinement of theoretical frameworks. Over the past decade, the Research Center for Chinese Social History at Shanxi University has devoted sustained effort to the collection, preservation, and digitization of a vast body of rural grassroots archives from the era of collectivization.

Rich in content, these materials document the profound transformations of a distinctive historical period and illuminate changes in production, governance, social relations, and everyday life at the grassroots level. Centered on the theme of rural society during the collectivization era, faculty and students have pursued a series of empirically grounded studies that deepen our understanding of regional society in Shanxi and contribute to broader debates on social change in collectivization-era China.

By integrating long-term fieldwork, archival reconstruction, and micro-level social analysis, this lecture reflects on how rural grassroots archives can be mobilized to reconstruct the lived experience of collectivization and to rethink key issues in modern Chinese social history.

Ma Weiqiang is Professor of Modern Chinese History at the Research Center for Chinese Social History, Shanxi University, and currently a Visiting Scholar at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on rural China from the revolutionary period through the era of collectivization, with particular attention to grassroots archives, village-level governance, and everyday social life. He has led long-term fieldwork projects across Shanxi Province, collecting and organizing millions of pages of rural archival materials, and has published extensively on land reform, collectivization, and rural society in modern China

Pre-Lecture Readings
To facilitate discussion, participants are encouraged to read the following works in advance:
1、马维强：《双口村：集体化时代的身份、地位与乡村日常生活》
（Ma Weiqiang, Shuangkou Village: Identity, Status, and Everyday Life in the Era of Collectivization）
— A village-level microhistory that reconstructs social hierarchy, political identity, and everyday practices under collectivization, based on extensive grassroots archival materials.

2、Xing Long and Ma Weiqiang,“Rural Grassroots Files from the Collectivization Era: Archives of the Chinese Social History Research Center of Shanxi University,”
Modern China, Vol. 34, No. 3 (2008).
— An introduction to the formation, structure, and scholarly significance of rural grassroots archives from Shanxi, and their methodological implications for the study of collectivization-era rural China.