Guangdong

In January 2006, the local government of a village in Guangdong, China known as Panlong decided to seize the village's communal farmland to lease to foreign investors. The farmers of this village however had no input in the decision and intended to fight to save their land. Equipped with pitchforks, they gathered themselves and blocked a highway near one of the farms being seized. It quickly became violent when the government imposed extreme violence upon them with electric batons. After the incident ended, there was no media coverage of the occurrence despite the fact that the rebellion is not even over but is continuing to grow more and more violent as other villages in similar circumstances join the rebellion (Beech 2006:22 - 24). The article in Time Magazine titled "Inside the Pitchfork Rebellion" discusses these farmers' fight against the government and can be looked at to better understand the concepts of power, hegemony, globalization, capitalism and their effects on a society.

The term power refers to the ability to apply one's will upon others whether they resist or not (Lavenda and Schultz 2005:204). It is the ability to bring about outcomes. Those who use power within a society to bring about outcomes are considered to have authority. However, authority is only granted when the large majority of the society's population considers their use of power as legitimate. If the population does not see their use of power as legitimate, then they are ruling through domination and force. To avoid this, the government has methods of maintaining control without using force, such as through ideology. Ideology is a term which refers to the most commonly valued beliefs and attitudes in a society (Lavenda and Schultz 2005:239). By indirectly influencing the people to accept their rule and their use of force as legitimate, they can effectively rule through ideology and not force. This concept is called hegemony (Lavenda and Schultz 2005:209). It persuades the perspectives of a culture or society by naturalizing their ideas and establishing them as the common sense view points. If this hegemonic rule collapses and the population no longer views the authorities decisions or use of force as legitimate then it can lead to a power struggle between the people and the authority. When the people refuse the power of the authority it is referred to as a resistance. This is all being demonstrated in the events in Panlong.

In Panlong, the local government had the power to make the decisions that it has made, to seize the communal farmland without input from the villagers, but because the decision was not agreed upon by the majority of people in the village, their power lost its legitimacy to the people and led to a resistance. Over one thousand villagers gathered on a highway near the farmland that was planned to be taken, to express their viewpoint. Holding pitchforks and signs, they attempted to express their disapproval of the government's decision (Beech 2006:22 - 23). This is an example of an organized resistance. Because the government persisted to move forward with their plans, their views are no longer shared by the people meaning they have lost their hegemonic rule. So this leaves them with the only method to maintain their position of power being through domination and force. They attacked the villagers with electrical batons and as a result over twenty people were seriously injured and a few were killed (Beech 2006:22). The government has lost the support of their people and since they no longer share the same views, ideologies have shifted, and when this happens, it leads to a rebellion and possibly a revolution. According to class lectures, revolution occurs when there is a drastic change in ways of thinking and the government is overthrown by the people it governs. Therefore to prevent a revolution this government would need to prevent any more people from hearing of the events taking place so that they can not join in the resistance. That is exactly what these local governments are doing in China right now. The Panlong government, which is faced with the largest up-rise of all the villages, is attempting to silence communicate to anyone outside the village about what is taking place (Beech 2006:23). They are doing this through force whereas they no longer rule through ideology. Through organizational power they have managed to keep the media from discussing any of the events. Organizational power is a form of power which is used to describe how people or a social system can prevent others from certain actions by limiting their choices or knowledge (Lavenda and Schultz 2005:204). In this case the government has prevented other villages from joining the rebellion by limiting their