THE EVOLUTION OF LOCAL ASSOCIATIONS AND CHINESE TRADITIONAL SPORTS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ‘STATE-SOCIETY’ RELATIONSHIP

Abstract

Problems such as the roles local associations and the state play in traditional sports evolution have never received sufficient attention from academia worldwide. On the basis of the literature and fieldwork, the local associations were embedded into the changing context of the “state-society” relationship in this study to explore the cultural evolution mechanism of traditional sports in an authoritarian country during its transition to modernization. This study suggested that the evolution of Chinese traditional sports is largely determined by the power game relationship between the political state and rural society. The “dual system” ruling mode of the feudal empires created a developed and an active autonomous space for traditional sports. With local associations banned or replaced by the totalitarian state after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, traditional sports were halted or transformed into different forms of the national orthodox sports culture. The system reform focused on “state ebb and private flow” and has sustained the interaction and coordination between state interventions and social self-governance since 1978. The local associations, as modern civil organizations, have attracted various local elites and made significant contributions to the revival of Chinese traditional sports.