Table of Content

20 May 2011, Volume 31 Issue 3

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Articles

The New Generation of Migrant Workers: Social Attitudes and Behavioral Choices

Li Peilin | Tian Feng

2011, 31(3):  1-23. 

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The new generation of migrant workers who were born after 1980 has numbered approximately 100 million. This generation is the primary group that has helped breaking down the dual urbanrural structure and speeding up urbanization in the social transformation in China. Compared with the previous generation of migrant workers, this new generation has changed tremendously in values and behavioral rules.  Based on the data from the “Chinese General Social Survey” by the Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS：CGSS 2008), this paper analyses and compares new migrant workers’ incomes, education, working skills, consumption characteristics, and social status and identity, with a focus on the impact of two important factors of “intergeneration” (new generation) and “class” (migrant workers) on the new migrant workers’ conditions, behaviors, and social attitudes, as well as the interrelationships between income, life pressure, and social attitudes. The results indicate that the change in life pressure and the enhanced awareness of individual rights have extremely important influences on the social attitudes and behavioral choices of the new generation of migrant workers.

Confrontation by Rightness (Li): Strategies in Urban Collective Actions：The RightsDefending Movement of the Homeowners in Southern Garden, Guangzhou

Zhu Jiangang

2011, 31(3):  24-41. 

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Since the1990s, homeowners’ rightsdefending actions in the rapid process of urbanization have attracted our attention. This paper provides narratives and analyses of a collective protest concerning issues around community management fees and homeowners’ committee in a suburb community of Guangzhou. It argues that in the rightsdefending movement by the middle class, with the middleaged and senior residents being its main body, its action strategies are not just out of the lawbased confrontation, but more so influenced by the multicultural logic of rightnessbased confrontation including actors’ legal confrontation out of benefit rationality, everyday life moral balance as recognized and sought after based on the concept of “home,” and the discourse/value system in people’s struggles associated with the political culture in past socialist campaign mobilizations. This sort of rightnessbased confrontation in the urban community governance shares some similarity with, but at the same time, differs somewhat from the lawbased confrontation seen in the Chinese rural grassroots society. It propels the transformation of the governance structure in the Chinese urban society.

The Maintenance/Control Type of Political Power: Characteristics of Township Governments in the Web of Multiple Structures

2011, 31(3):  42-67. 

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Since the “central task” of the township governments manifests their functions and roles, the centraltask perspective may reveal some of their concrete characteristics. However, this perspective can only let us see the various facets of the characteristics of township governments but not their essential features that are hidden in the web of multiple structures, that is, being at the intersection of the state and society, which is at the bottom rung of the bureaucrat hierarchy, under the topdown institutional pressure but having to face a bottomup rural society. This unique position in the web of multiple structures has shaped township governments’ essential feature of a “maintenance/control political power.” In order to remold this feature, the construction of the state power must be directed to the operational structure of township governments. 

Beyond StateConferred Rights? A Case Study on Homeowners’ Confrontation in Guangzhou〖JP〗

Zhuang Wenjia

2011, 31(3):  88-113. 

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After years of setbacks in defending their house property rights, the homeowners in Guangzhou have begun to see another facet for collective demandunfair rules as the target. On the one hand, their trust in the rulemaking authority has redirected their confrontational demand from taking a reactive action in execution and participation to an active action in rule making. On the other hand, organized confrontation has promoted the mutual trust and solidarity among the owners across residential districts, having transformed the microlevel social capital of those whose interest are not directly related toward macrolevel social capital of the organization. 

Capital Resources to the Countryside and the Flow within the Forestry：The Field Experience of Town S in Hubei Province

Guo Liang

2011, 31(3):  114-137. 

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With further reform of the ownership of forests, profitaimed capital resources are being invested in opening up forestry on a large scale, which meets the business needs of the local governments. All of this started the initial momentum of the flow within the forestry. In the process, both informal and formal resources in the rural society have been fully utilized, thus stimulating the efficiency of the flow. On the surface, the flow is based on the voluntary principle, but indepth empirical studies have discovered that the flow momentum has been launched on the basis of farmers being mobilized and pushed, thus resulting in a conflict between rightness in operations and inequality in actuality. Due to the shaping power of the local society’s power connections over the powerprofit structure, the lone force to establish property ownership will not be capable of protecting farmers’ actual interests. In a sense, farmers’ increase in their land revenues depends not only on the new category of rights but also on the coordination between the new contract of property rights and the political environment that embeds it.

Enlistment: Social Stratification and Individual Mobility of  Choice in the Institutional Transition

Wang Jianhua

2011, 31(3):  138-154. 

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The state’s institutional transition has not only brought about changes in the social stratification mechanism but also stimulated individuals to actively make choices for mobility. Therefore, the model of status attainment should not consider the stratification mechanism only and ignore the impact from the individual mobility of choice at the micro level. The analysis of the enlistment data from the CGSS2006 survey reported in this paper has supported this view. The reward of enlistment as a manifest of political loyalty has greatly decreased during the postreform era. The modes to attain soldier statuses in different periods embodied the combined effects of the changing social stratification mechanisms and the individual mobility of choice after examining the reward of the military service. When the military service could bring in a higher reward, the distribution of this resource showed a higher level of inequality across different strata. Lastly, in the status attainment during the military service, because of the effects of the power being shielded, the individually selected mobility changed the direction in status attainment to the opposite, i.e., it was the rural youth and the children of the manual workers that had a higher probability to become Communist Party members.

Perceptions of Distributive Justice of the Residents in Contemporary China’s Large Cities: An Empirical Study Based on the Survey in Shanghai.

Wang Fuqin

2011, 31(3):  155-183. 

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Based on the selfinterest theory and attribution theory, this study analyzed the data from the “Survey of Social Class and Social Awareness of Shanghai Residents” conducted by the Department of Sociology at Shanghai University in downtown areas of Shanghai between August 2006 and January 2007 to examine the perceptions of distributive justice of the residents in contemporary China’s large cities and the mechanisms for the formation of such perceptions. The study discovered that the residents in large cities clearly perceived the income distribution across major social groups as unfair. Whether or not a social class possessed a dominant status did not correlate with people’s perceptions of distributive justice but people’s socioeconomic status and their attribution for social inequality did. Those with an advantageous economic status not only directly affected people’s perceptions of distributive justice but such an effect could also be indirect through people’s preferred mode of attribution of social inequality. Furthermore, the effect of attribution mode was larger than that of socioeconomic status: The more likely a person was to attribute social inequality to individual performance (internal causes), the more likely that person tended to have a strong sense of distributive justice. On the other hand, the more likely a person was to attribute social inequality to power or policies (external causes), the more likely that person tended to have a strong sense of distributive injustice.

An Empirical Analysis of Carbon Emission in the Household Comsumption Peak Period in China.

Chen Jiaying | Peng Xizhe

2011, 31(3):  184-199. 

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This paper takes the factor of household consumption peak period into consideration and analyzes the impact of the structural changes in household consumption on carbon emissions in China. Based on the studies using the family life cycle theory in the consumption field, this paper assumes that household members aged 40-54 years consume the most. Having the STIRPAT model modified in terms of environmental pressure, this paper applies the “household carbon emission model” to the analysis of the impact of the differences in household consumption in different stages of the family cycle on carbon emissions. Furthermore, the paper uses the method of scenario analysis to predict the possible impact of future changes in the household consumption peak period on carbon emissions. 

Social Capital and Status Attainment: Simple and Complex Causal Mechanisms and Associations  

Lü Tao

2011, 31(3):  200-223. 

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The classic theory emphasizes that the statusrelated return of mobilized social capitals is independent of that of personal capitals, which is a theoretical construction based on simple causality. From the perspective of complex causality, this paper emphasizes that, because of the constraints of the entire society on the socially needed efficiency of the social positions, the processes by which social capitals produce returns would be restricted by the level of personal human capital, which is a complex causal mechanism. So, the positive association between social capital jointed with human capital and status attainment should be the focus of examination in order to observe the complex causation between social capital and status attainment. 

“IntersubjectivityIntervent Action” Frame：Reflection Spectrum in Qualitative Research  

Zheng Qingjie

2011, 31(3):  224-241. 

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Qualitative research has three dilemmas: intersubjectivity, political representation, and participatory action. The former two are epistemological dilemmas, whereas the last is dilemmas in Emancipatory Politics and action. The journey of scholars’ reflections upon these three dilemmas has gone through, step by step, their breadth, depth, and intensity. A series of reflections, including those first on the object and now on the research itself and then on the cognitive research and now on the action research, have converged to form the “intersubjectivityintervent action” reflection spectrum in qualitative research. This paper provides a systematic, theoretical review in this regard.