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Table of Content

    20 March 2014, Volume 34 Issue 2
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    Articles
    The China Family Panel Studies: Design and Practice
    XIE Yu，HU Jingwei，ZHANG Chunni
    2014, 34(2):  1-32. 
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    The China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), launched by Peking University, is a nationwide, comprehensive, longitudinal social survey. The project aims to document historically unprecedented social changes that are currently taking place in China in different domains by repeatedly collecting information from a sample of individuals, households, and communities over an extended period. In order to help researchers better understand the CFPS project and its data, this article describes the background and characteristics of the CFPS in four aspects. In research design, the CFPS adopts multiplelevel questionnaires and a panel design to track changes in individuals and households so as to allow researchers to study heterogeneity, embeddedness, complexity, and timedependency of social phenomena. In implementation, it uses multistage, implicit stratification, and probability proportion to size sampling methods with a sampling frame that integrates rural and urban populations to obtain a nationally representative sample. To assure data quality, the CFPS uses advanced computerassisted personal interviewing (CAPI) techniques in its fieldwork. By now, the 2010 baseline survey, the 2011 smallscale followup survey for maintenance, and the 2012 fullscale followup survey have been completed. All followup strategies have met many research needs but remained practical. In  contents, the CFPS learned from the methods and experiences from the most influential survey projects in the world. The questionnaires not only cover a wide range of topics but also consist of intergraded modules for rural and urban interviews and gathering information of family structure and family members, migrant mobility, event history (e.g., history of marriage, education, and employment), cognitive ability, and child development. Finally,we present preliminary findings about income inequality and poverty, marital events and cohabitation, and cognitive ability based on the 2010 and 2012 CFPS data, as demonstrations of the CFPS’s potentials for social science, owing to its strengths in research design and topical contents.
    The Myth of Matriarchy: A Genealogy of Western Matriarchal Thought (I)
    WU Fei
    2014, 34(2):  33-59. 
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    This is the first part of “The Genealogy of Western Matriarchal Thought”. After Bachofen published his book on matriarchy in 1861 (refer to the second part of this article for the discussion of Bachofen), matriarchy soon became a hot topic among anthropologists in the late 19th century and also made a great impact on Chinese academia in the 20th century. But by the beginning of the 20th century, most anthropologists in the West had already discarded the idea of matriarchy. This paper is not intended to introduce or repeat the debate over matriarchy in the Western academia; instead, it is to clarify the real thoughts of these thinkers in the 19th century and trace the intellectual origin of matriarchy. The first part of the paper outlines the matriarchal and matrilineal thoughts among several major anthropologists in the 19th century. Beginning with the discussion of patriarchy by Sir Maine and Coulange, the author describes how McLennan, Morgan and Engels raised the issue of matriarchy as a response and an extension to the idea of patriarchy in classical studies. All of them believed that there had existed a matriarchal period because they thought that it was more difficult to identify one’s father than one’s mother, and therefore there should have been a period in which people knew only their mothers but not their fathers. Patriarchy evolved in only at a later time. To reason, they all contended that there had been an entirely promiscuous period, a state that was most natural. Human beings first entered the matriarchal period and then the patriarchal period, a development from being natural to being civilized. Hence these thinkers all saw matriarchy as a more primitive stage closer to nature and patriarchy as a more civilized stage marked by inequality.
    A Genealogical Study of the Publicness in Mental Health: A History of AntiPsychiatry and Its Implications
    2014, 34(2):  60-93. 
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    The author of the present thesis attempts to explore the implications of the Antipsychiatry Movement and its practice since 1950, as regards the publicness and its realization of mental health in the modern society, and elaborate the historical motivation for the aforementioned publicness. Through the evaluation of the social and political background of the Minority Groups’struggle for Civil Rights in the 1950s, a review has been initiated of the publicness of mental health in the context of AntiPsychiatry Movement, which as against the traditional psychiatric crisis, treats patients of mental disorder as subjects in the psychiatric sphere. In other words, when the traditional psychiatry leads to nowhere, the criticism of“total institution”and the Labeling Theory has become the driving force of Deinstitutionalization. The Groupe Information Asiles (GIA) as the voluntary grassroots organization has revolutionized the social care in respect of mental disorder. In Italy, Basaglia’s mental health reform has rehabilitated and released the inmates from the institutions, and thus has ensured their rights of citizenship through the Basaglia Law as well as the disestablishment of psychiatric hospitals. It follows that the historical facts in review would facilitate the construal of the publicness of mental health, including the openness of the mental health service provided with the promotion of public participation as well as the establishment of legal perimeters for mental health, among which, however, the most urgent task is to ensure the inmates as subjects through the maintenance of civic spirit and values. The author concludes with a reinterpretation of the objectives and value orientation of the publicness of mental health, the public participation into the reform of mental health system, and the historical process of the progressive in human rights and legislative reform.
    Street, Behavior, Art: Advocating Gender Rights and the Innovation of a Social Movement Repertoire
    WEI Wei
    2014, 34(2):  94-117. 
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    In media, the year of 2012 has been named as the “the First Year of Chinese Feminist Activism”. Through closely examining the widely influential genderrelated media events such as “occupying men’s washroom”,“the blooded brides”,“antisexual harassment in Shanghai Metro”, and “bareheaded sisters protesting against gender discrimination in college admission”, this paper documents and analyzes the rise and development of the “street behavioral art” as a new contentious action repertoire in current Chinese society. Contrast to the flourishing literature on contentious politics in recent years, there is a visible gap in the study of social movement repertoires in China. In order to fill in the gap, the current research used indepth interviews and document analysis to collect data from the individuals and organizations that had been participating in today’s Chinese feminist activities. There were three major research questions: (1) How had the street behavioral art evolved into a novel contentious repertoire through the interactions between social movements and the state? (2) How did the three key components of this repertoire each contribute to the success of contentious actions respectively? (3) How should we evaluate the impact of the street behavioral art as a contentious repertoire? In order to answer these questions, the article first reviews the current theoretical perspectives and related studies in this field, and then gives a brief presentation of the background of the political contention in contemporary China for the emergence of the street behavioral art. Using the empirical data from street activism for gender equality, the paper then focuses on analyzing the three key components of this contentious repertoire—street, behavior, and art—by looking at how they each had contributed to the success of this contentious action repertoire, respectively. The rise of the street behavioral art has to be placed in the context where the globalization of social movements (particularly, the flow of social movement discourses and tactics) interact with the reality of contemporary Chinese society (opportunities and constraints) for an examination. As social movements have to face many institutional constraints, activists have to be quite creative in order to make their voices heard and their concerns understood by both the authorities and the public. The street behavioral art proves to be an effective strategy to reach that goal. Its success can be attributed to the combination of public location, artistic expression and organized actions. “Art” serves the objective of going onto the street;“street” is to expand the influences and effects of the “behavior/action”. In the conclusion, the author discusses the impacts of the street behavioral art for pushing social movement’s agenda in terms of policy advocacy, participation mobilization and cultural change.
    House Purchasing: Housing Stratification and SelfSelected Mobility in Institutional Transition
    MAO Xiao-Beng
    2014, 34(2):  118-139. 
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    The literature on housing stratification has ignored the effect of selfselection on housing stratification when residents face changes in the opportunity structure triggered by the housing reform. An analysis of the data from a questionnaire survey of over 1,000 households conducted in Guangzhou in2010 using the Endogeneity Switching Regression Model found the effect of selfselection in the housing stratification mechanisms during the process of marketoriented reform: Capable people within the state system before 1998 tended not to buy houses, and if they did, their housing class status was actually lowered; capable people outside the state system before 1998 and all capable people after 1998 tended to buy houses, and if they didn’t, their housing class status slipped. That is to say, after 1998, the housing class status of those with human or political capital would rise only if they did purchase houses; if not, their housing class status would not improve significantly. Thus, the study concluded that the power and market mechanisms were the structural factors which influenced housing stratification, and that people’s human and political capitals were necessary but not sufficient conditions for house purchasing. To some extent, the judgment that “the higher a person’s human capital and/or political capital is, the higher his/her housing class status is” ignored the role of the person’s selfselection. Of course, the decision making of whether to purchase a house or not might be a very complex selective process. In order to study the selective function in the process indepth, dynamic data including the buyer’s purchasing behaviors and the end results in different social contexts are needed. Because of the flaws in the real estate market and system, residents’freedom to make purchasing decisions is quite limited. These constraints for the current study were beyond the author’s means to overcome.
    Insurance against Uncertainty and Subjective Wellbeing of City Workers: Based on the Counterfactual Framework
    LI Hou-Jian
    2014, 34(2):  140-165. 
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    With the central government paying more attention to livelihood issues, how to make people feel happy has become an important theme of governmental work. Against this background, this study used city workers’subjective happiness as an index of livelihood to systematically investigate the impacts of insurance against uncertainty on their subjective wellbeing. The existing literature about the important mechanisms of such insurances affecting people’s subjective wellbeing was first reviewed, and then their effects on city workers’subjective wellbeing were evaluated using the data from 2007 Chinese Household Income Survey. It was found that different types of insurances had significantly different effects on city workers’subjective wellbeing. Having pension insurance, unemployment insurance and injury insurance significantly improved city workers’subjective wellbeing, whereas participating in health insurance didn’t. The total variance of the city workers’subjective wellbeing that could be explained by the four kinds of insurances was 10 percent, with the unemployment insurance being the most important factor. According to the hedonic adaptation theory, city workers’subjective wellbeing will change, that is to say, with insurance against uncertainty being gradually promoted and implemented, the subjective wellbeing of the city workers may regress to their preinsurance level. If so, the government’s current effects to improve people’s livelihood via insurance policies are worthy of recognition, however, their returns in term of livelihood will be diminishing with the gradual popularization of the social security system. Thus, the government should pay attention to the quality of the longterm operation of the social security system.
    Gender Ideology, Modernization, and Women’s Housework Time in China
    YU Jia
    2014, 34(2):  166-192. 
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    Using the data from 2010 China Family Panel Studies, this study examined the determinants of married women’s housework time in China. Their time spent on paid work and their absolute earnings were found to be negatively associated with their time spent on domestic chores. This study also specifically examined the impact of women’s relative income on their time for housework. The literature in this regard indicated that, when women outearned their husbands, they tended not to reduce their housework time as their relative earnings increased, a phenomenon known as “gender display.” In other words, the wife’s bargaining power for housework with her relative income was constrained by the gender ideology.
    This study found that there were urbanrural and regional differences in the effect of the wife’s relative income on her housework time. The results indicated that increased relative income could help urban married women continuously reduce their housework time. However, for rural married women, the effect of relative income on reducing housework time is limited by their transitional gender ideology, and the “gender display” phenomenon existed.
    Linking the survey data to the prefecturelevel indicator of modernization, this study found that, in the rural areas, the effect of relative income on housework time varied with the level of modernization. Specially, the bargaining power of wife’s relative income in housework time was stronger when the rural areas were more modernized. In contrast, the bargaining power was more limited in rural areas with lower modernization level, and“gender display” was more likely to exist. 
    The Impact of Social Health Insurance on Health Outcomes among Older Adults: An Empirical Study in Zhejiang Province, China
    LIU Xiaoting
    2014, 34(2):  193-214. 
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     Debates about the relationships between health insurance, healthcare utilization and health outcomes in the empirical studies at home and abroad are not over yet. What has been empirically confirmed is the positive correlation between health insurance and healthcare utilization although direct associations between health insurance and health outcomes are not clear. Only when health insurance has the improvement of people’s health as its ultimate goal can it be said as being effective and fair. However, examining health outcomes is absent in the assessment of the current health insurance reform.
    The outcomes of statistical analyses of the data of 2010 Sampling Survey of the Status of the Elderly in Urban and Rural China  (Zhejiang Province) suggested that the sole concentration on expanding insurance coverage would not be enough. More importantly, attention should be given to the equality in healthcare and health outcomes across different insurance plans. A oneway ANOVA analysis demonstrated unequal disparities in participation in health insurance plans and health outcomes among the older adults. Multiple linear regressions showed the significance of health insurance coverage as an independent variable in predicting health outcomes but this significance was replaced by the significant effects of specific insurance plans.  Analyses of the interactions revealed a main negative relationship between healthcare utilization and health outcomes but health insurance, as a moderator, could improve the health status of the older adults who utilized healthcare more, although the effect of the New Rural Cooperative Medical System (NRCMS) was in the opposite direction. The mediating effects of health insurance on older adults’ health outcomes were a function of the individual and structural factors such as socioeconomic status and number of chronic diseases but social support and social networks should be included as influencing factors as well.
    This study has concluded that reflecting upon the health insurance reform is needed as the universal health insurance is not only to improve the accessibility to the service in the healthcare system but also to guarantee the equal medical welfare entitlement across different social groups, and ultimately, to obtain equal health outcomes. At present, however, NRCMS resulting from the differentiated treatment in different insurance plans and the vulnerability of the urban older adults with health insurance and those without in receiving healthcare benefits have led to their poorer health and their inferior status in terms of equal health outcomes.