An aerial view of the Shexian Dryland Stone Terraced System in Handan, Hebei Province, which FAO designated as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System in 2022 Photo: CFP

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China is a time-honored agricultural civilization with rich agricultural heritage. In China, agricultural heritage is made of dynamic agricultural production, living, and ecological systems, which were shaped over thousands of years of farming practices by Chinese laborers. It is a complete organizational system for agricultural society, culture and thoughts, and farming skills. 

In 2002, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations launched the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) programme. After more than two decades of development, 67 systems in 23 countries and regions have been included in the GIAHS list, on which China tops the ranking with 19 systems. 

Agricultural heritage is a fifth world heritage type, following natural heritage, cultural heritage, mixed heritage, and intangible cultural heritage. It is a new “member” of the world heritage “family.” 

China started to explore and conserve important agricultural heritage in 2012. So far, 138 items have been evaluated as Chinese important agricultural heritage, which are distributed in 29 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities across the nation. The institution of globally and nationally important agricultural heritage is of great significance to preserving biodiversity and cultural diversity, providing insights and solutions for humanity to cope with modernity crises. 

Sociological perspective essential 

Despite agricultural heritage’s increasingly prominent role and value on the economic, social, cultural, and ecological fronts, academia is still exploring how living agricultural heritage can be researched, protected, and inherited, and how we can effectively promote sustainable development of communities in places with agricultural heritage. 

For many years, living agricultural heritage practices, as an agricultural production and ecological system, have received growing attention from scholars of agriculture, ecology, and environmental and resource sciences. However, as a system that encompasses social life, social organizations, social culture, and a cultural landscape, it is not fully appreciated by related disciplines. Social sciences, particularly sociology, have not attached adequate importance to agricultural heritage. A multi- and cross-disciplinary approach to the study of agricultural heritage has not taken shape yet. 

Since its birth, sociology has had the courage to face and analyze social transformations, along with insights to make sense of society holistically. Classical Western sociology, represented by Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber, bravely responded to the emergence of capitalism and the major social transition from agricultural society to industrial society, committing themselves to solving varieties of social problems arising in the process of social transformation. 

Mission of Chinese sociology 

Currently, as the national rural revitalization strategy is being implemented in China, the farming culture, a key component of fine traditional Chinese culture, will play a significant role in the transformation and development of agriculture and rural areas in the Chinese modernization drive. 

In this regard, understanding the underpinnings of agriculture and rural areas amid Chinese modernization, and interpreting the overall function and role of agricultural heritage systems in the process of agricultural and rural modernization, have become urgent and practical issues facing the Chinese sociological community. 

Across China, important agricultural heritage systems of the global and national levels are widely distributed, involving more than 1,000 villages and communities, many of which are economically underdeveloped or located in villages of ethnic minority areas. 

At present, 138 Chinese important agricultural heritage items have been identified in 151 counties (county-level cities and districts) in 29 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities. They cover more than 40 ethnic groups, more than 60 husbandry species, and a wide range of agricultural ecological types. One fourth of the villages and communities in places with unique agricultural heritage practices were previously impoverished. 

All of these villages and communities boast advantaged agricultural resource endowments and intact agricultural production systems. Epitomizing cultural diversity, they exemplify the inheritance of the profound and centuries-old Chinese farming culture, closely and fully reflecting an orderly social and cultural system that formed over the long history of the farming culture. Therefore, these villages and communities have huge potential to demonstrate how the farming culture has been modernized successfully. 

Observing, reflecting on, and summarizing the basic logic, internal mechanism, and practical path of modernization in these villages and communities is crucial for Chinese sociology to understand rural society more fully. It is a bounden responsibility and mission of Chinese sociology as a discipline. 

Villages and communities in places with important agricultural heritage systems are models of the Chinese farming culture — and also of Chinese rural society. In Chinese sociology, all research topics pertaining to agriculture can be studied in villages and communities with agricultural heritage. Their modernization and sustainable development should not be divorced from the guidance of sociological theory and methodology. Sociology should use its theories and time-tested approaches to explain and address a series of related issues such as social transformation, social culture, social actions, social motives, social mentality, social organizations, social relations, social structure, social process, social norms, social significance, and social consequences. 

Chinese sociology should not lose this vast and critical research field of villages and communities in places with important agricultural heritage. As pristine examples of the preservation, inheritance, and development of the farming culture in contemporary Chinese rural areas, these villages and communities showcase how the farming culture reasonably responds to modernization, industrialization, and urbanization in rural society. In a vivid microcosm of different predicaments in the development of modernizing urban and rural areas in China, many smart solutions surface when farmers draw upon wisdom from farming practices, contributing to China’s steady transformation. In this sense, agricultural heritage should also enter the research vision of Chinese sociology, and Chinese sociology should be present in the field of agricultural heritage. 

Vitalizing heritage studies 

Studying agricultural heritage through the lens of sociology means we must reexamine the core value of heritage and bring the “human dimension,” which was not sufficiently attended to in previous studies, back to the research horizon. The subject of agricultural heritage is humanity. Humans created, own, and use heritage and should also protect and benefit from it. Humanity is always at the core of the value of agricultural heritage and the key to the heritage’s existence, continuation, and development. 

In his late years, renowned Chinese sociologist Fei Xiaotong emphasized many times that sociology must be humanistic. Through sociological field research and theoretical interpretation, human subjectivity and value will be underscored through agricultural heritage. Therefore, sociology should compensate for deficiencies in current agricultural heritage studies to help cultivate holistic research views, comprehensive research frameworks, and explanatory paths, to endow related research with deep humanism. 

Placing agricultural heritage on the sociology agenda means scholars must revisit the social attributes and cultural value of agricultural heritage to put “society” back into the research spotlight. Agricultural heritage is not only an agricultural production and natural ecological system, but also represents an organically interrelated living and life system. The reason why living agricultural heritage has been passed down for generations lies in the organic fusion of production, ecology, living habits, and lives of the people in village societies. In studies of agricultural heritage, it is necessary to unveil the social mechanism of the organic integration with sociological insights. Historical sociology stresses the historicity and social understanding of culture, which in fact sets social structure and social culture on the continuous trajectory of history, so that we can thoroughly comprehend the organic fusion over time. 

Including agricultural heritage as a major sociological research topic means that sociologists focusing on rural China need to return to the social and cultural veil of rural society itself, in order to root their analysis deeper in the soil of the Chinese farming culture. In the rural picture of places with important agricultural heritage, rural organizations, atmosphere, rituals, customs, ethics, and landscapes all contain the rich logic of rural society and profound background of rural culture. Understanding the operational mechanism of the logic at villages and communities in places with agricultural heritage is a new issue brought by agricultural heritage to sociology and might reshape indigenious methodologies of Chinese sociology. 

Chinese civilization has always been grounded in agriculture. The new world heritage form — important agricultural heritage — has again brought the farming culture into the academic gaze in a unique way. Due to basic features like dynamism, adaptability, and complexity, alongside the strategic and endangered nature, China’s important agricultural heritage has become a comprehensive research field requiring interdisciplinary collaboration. The absence of sociology will completely silence the “people” who created these practices, and lead to the disappearance of “society” in places with agricultural heritage. Incorporating agricultural heritage into the scope of sociology will extend the depth and breadth of heritage studies and add academic warmth to the field by highlighting the role of the people. The new focus will also inject vitality and new possibilities into Chinese sociology. 

Zhou Dandan is an associate professor from the College of Humanities and Development Studies at China Agricultural University. 

Edited by CHEN MIRONG