The Reconstruction of Social Order in Drug-stricken Communities

Abstract

Society is like a large, fast-spinning wheel. When the center rotates rapidly, it spreads social sediments to the edges and leads residents in outlying areas to become victims of social transformation. Originally an urban phenomenon, drug problems emerged in and struck some vulnerable rural regions after that. To research how these communities reconstructed the social order, I did my field work in the City of M for 13 years. Analyzing the complicated social ecology of this area, this paper applies the theory of community proposed by Christie W. Kiefer to discuss the contribution of grassroots organizations and elites to the reconstruction of the social order. Taking C village as a successful example, I argue that the communities I studied also encounter some challenges: community fragmentation, the erosion of traditional authority, and the fragility of rural livelihoods. These difficulties show that the communities must coordinate and cooperate on a large scale with the broader society. With support from society as a whole and from every level of the social hierarchy, these communities can be extricated from their drug-afflicted situation and achieve order reconstruction.