How Is Farmer Cooperation Possible? Interaction, Identity, and Community Capacity in a Chinese Rural Community

ABSTRACT

How can cooperation emerge in communities where institutional enforcement is weak and social relations are fragmented? Drawing on a longitudinal case study of Village L in rural China (2017–2021), this paper develops a five‐stage process model that explains the endogenous emergence of cooperation. Moving beyond incentive‐ and institution‐centered accounts, the analysis shows how cooperation is dynamically generated through a sequence of interactional mechanisms: initiated by exemplary action, expanded through observational learning and symbolic reinforcement, deepened through deliberative coordination that activates a collective identity, and stabilized through ritualization into a cooperative cultural structure. The study demonstrates that farmers' agency is not a pregiven individual capacity but an emergent, relational outcome of interactional processes unfolding over time. By examining how interaction, identity formation, and cultural stabilization are linked in practice, this article treats cooperation as an emergent social accomplishment rather than a fixed equilibrium or a problem of institutional design. It develops a process‐based explanation of how community capacity and collective agency are gradually built in rural settings marked by weak institutions and fragmented social relations. In doing so, the study speaks to ongoing debates in rural sociology about how cooperation is generated and sustained in everyday social life.