羅州 草洞洞契의 장기지속과 변화, 1601～2001

Abstract

Among East Asian rural regions since the Song(China) era, a type of social regulation at village level, so called "hyang'yak"(village compact) had been spread out, contributing to the spread of Confucian morals and the growth of rural communities led by local elites. In Korea too, since the seventeenth century, Ch'odong village associations adopted hyang'yak as governing principles to guide rural communities and lasted thereafter for four hundred years. Primary sources used in this article are old documents of the Ch'odong Village Association at village level, Land Registers ranging from 1915 to 1960, and Population Registers of Residents since 1917 (to 1960). One concern of the research is with the factors that contribute to the long survival of Ch'odong village associations. A tentative answer to that inquiry is that Dong-kye came to constitute a core of village identity that connected village members both in ideological and economic terms. I choose the case of the Village Community at Ch'odong village at Naju county to examine its structure and function in detail. The other concern of the research is with a transformation of village communal relations during the modern transition of Korean society from its opening to the world and its colonial experiences. The study is particularly concerned with behavioral pattern of Korean peasants amid the transformation of village community at the face of modern impacts. In addressing the question of the behavioral pattern of peasants caught with modern changes, my research can be benefited from the theoretical debates surrounding 'moral economy'(vs. 'political economy'), whether peasants' strategies are derived from collective ethics of survival or individual rational choice.