The Evolution of Social Caging in the Rice Cultivation System: How Ecology–Crop–Human Interactions Discouraged Exit Options in East Asia

How and why did East Asians develop their tight-knit social relationships? In answering this question, I have developed a theoretical notion, the social cage, which is a social institution that rice-farming societies have built to discourage their members from exiting. Initially, this comparative-historical study traces back to the Song Dynasty to consider two institutionally complementary revolutions as the sources of contemporary social cages in East Asia: the emergence of the wet-rice transplanting technique and the evolution of Zhu Xi’s neo-Confucianism (Sung Idea). Next, by comparing the Jiangnan area of Southern China, Korea, and Japan during the premodern period, this article provides antecedent, premodern footages of contemporary rice cultivation cultures and their caging institutions. The article also suggests that the social cage institutions shaped through ecology–human interactions in the premodern era persistently affect industrialization outcomes today. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings as they pertain to contemporary social theory.