Chinese Journal of Sociology ›› 2019, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (1): 1-36.

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Case Studies towards the Analysis of Total Social Construction

QU Jingdong   

  1. Department of Sociology, Peking University
  • Online:2019-01-20 Published:2019-01-20

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Abstract:

Case study is an irreplaceable sociological strategy for research on social construction. Different from either hypothesis tests or descriptive accounts of social life, case study aims to make a long chain of interpretations from a typical case to the construction of the whole society, by linkages of concrete people, conditions and situations in a case with other related social, political, and cultural elements all the way through. In other words, the case is not only influenced by the policies made by central or local governments in different levels from above, but also located in grassroots customs and mores at bottom.
To find these multiple relations horizontally and vertically clustered in a case study, various methods of -graphy must be used, such as geography, cartography, demography, historiography, biography, autobiography, lexicography, and ethnography finally. But at the same time, all these elements and their relations should be activated by eventalization happened in daily life.
Through the ways of stimulation of abnormal process or sublimation of normal rituals in eventalization, the complicated, correlative, and sustainable relationships among social elements are presented as many social mechanisms in different dimensions. On all accounts, the whole scene of society will be opened out as a solid structure by the various points (events), lines (linkages), and plane (mechanism) in three dimensions, as Max Weber said, "the causal relations in sociological research would be satisfied as a special explanatory demonstration".

Key words: structuration, typicality, -graphy, eventalization, social mechanism, case study