Building on the analysis of administrative subcontracting, this paper develops the governance impossibility triangle as a mid-range theoretical framework. It argues that within any hierarchical principal-agent structure, three constraints-rigid performance targets, fixed resource constraints, and strict rule enforcement-cannot be simultaneously maximized. Organizations must therefore make structural trade-offs among these three elements. Based on this insight, the paper reinterprets three ideal-typical governance forms-administrative subcontracting, Weberian bureaucracy, and modern corporate governance-as distinct equilibria under different constraint combinations. It further derives a set of testable propositions to explain endogenous phenomena such as the expansion of informal institutions, selective implementation, campaign-style governance, ambiguous subcontracting, and organizational distortion. The paper also examines the implicit conditions under which the triangle holds-including technological limits, organizational absorption capacity, agent behavior, risk externalization, and legitimacy resources-and identifies potential pathways for reconfiguration, such as technological innovation, extraordinary mobilization, and organizational restructuring. By distinguishing between ex ante and ex post uncertainty management, it reveals a fundamental divide between bureaucratic and subcontracting logics. Finally, the paper argues that China's governance system, under conditions of rigid targets, resource constraints, dispersed information, and high risk externalities, has evolved into a hybrid structure: bureaucracy as the institutional base, subcontracting as the operational engine, and externalized organizational forms as complementary absorbers. This configuration enables governance to remain viable under structurally impossible conditions.
This article takes Ang Lee's Father Trilogy as a case study to examine the root causes of conflict and the mechanisms of reconfiguration in contemporary Chinese father-son relations. It argues that the tensions between fathers and sons depicted in the films do not stem solely from the clash between traditional and modern values, but are rooted in the structural repression of qing (affection) by the normative force of li (ritual/propriety) in Confucian ethics. When fathers, in the name of "it's for your own good", stubbornly uphold ritual demands such as patrilineal continuity and stern paternal authority, sons are caught in a constant tug-of-war between fulfilling filial obligations and pursuing self-realization. Building on the Confucian dialectic of qing and li, the article introduces the phenomenological notion of the halo of time, and shows that the repair of father-son relations is not a zero-sum game of unilateral concession. Rather, reconciliation emerges through shared memories and overlapping temporal experiences, in which the intertwining of retention, primal impression, and protention reactivates an original sense of kinship (qinqin zhi qing), thereby driving context-specific adjustments in ritual practice. However, even when fathers temporarily suspend their fixation on li and sons, through affective recognition, reconstruct their practice of filial piety, the deeper structural tension does not disappear. This is because male offspring are more tightly embedded in the pressure chain of family responsibility and thus confronted with a structural double bind in which paternal love always entails expectation, while the pursuit of freedom almost inevitably implies betraying that love. In sum, the article constructs an integrated analytical framework of qing-li-time, arguing that under conditions of loosening authority and family transformation, an affect-centered ethical logic still plays a crucial stabilizing and mediating role amid conflict. This study not only clarifies the dynamics of change in Chinese father-son relations but also provides a broadly applicable framework for understanding the emotional dynamics of kinship in cross-cultural contexts.
In recent years, technological innovations represented by automation and generative artificial intelligence have accelerated the reshaping of labor markets. Against this backdrop, China's labor market has been simultaneously shaped by both traditional stratification structures and the growing skill premium, resulting in a more complex and dynamic landscape. Drawing on large-scale online recruitment as well as survey data, this study systematically examines the skill-based segmentation of China's labor market and how it interacts with traditional institutional divides. Key findings reveal that skill disparities have emerged as a critical dimension of labor market differentiation in China. Workers engaged in occupations requiring higher levels of abstract cognitive skills enjoy significant advantages over other skill groups in terms of employment risks, income levels, working conditions, and social security benefits. These advantages persist even after accounting for differences in human capital and institutional segmentation. Furthermore, skill stratification interacts heterogeneously with traditional institutional segmentation: institutional protections in the public sector mitigate market consequences of skill disparities- particularly in employment risks and earnings-whereas the hukou system fails to exhibit such buffering effects. Notably, wage gaps driven by skill differences are even more pronounced among urban hukou holders. Overall, the findings support our hypothesis that skills constitute a key dimension of labor market segmentation in contemporary China. The market has become increasingly differentiated along the axis of skill competitiveness, with workers possessing higher-level abstract cognitive skills occupying more advantageous positions in terms of market returns. At the same time, technology-driven skill premiums and pre-existing institutional logics jointly shape hierarchical orders, underscoring the complexity of "layered transitions" within China's modernization process.
Why can the project system be implemented in a stable, widespread and highly pervasive manner, and what operational logic does it demonstrate in specific governance practices?This paper distinguishes between two levels: the observational perspective and the analytical dimension. The former encompasses the relationship between the central and local governments, as well as that between the state and society; the latter includes the essential intent of the system, and the interactive practices of multiple subjects. Based on these two levels, this paper identifies four typical mechanisms: externality, principal-agent, legitimacy, and embeddedness, thereby providing a holistic interpretive framework for project-based governance. The externality mechanism addresses the spatial and temporal spillovers of project costs and benefits, while the ambiguous division of rights and responsibilities between central and local authorities leads to significant tensions. Moreover, it emphasizes the logic of public goods while failing to adequately capture the logic of modernization and development. The principal-agent mechanism focuses on analyzing the organizational transmission between central and local authorities, especially the multi-tasking problem, as well as the information asymmetry and ambiguity arising from different directions of specialised and localized knowledge. It also helps explain the bundling practices of economic development and social welfare, and the emerging phenomena of hybrid governance and project package contracting. The legitimacy mechanism explores how performance, procedural, and moral legitimacy are isomorphically and heterogeneously intertwined in complex project governance practices, and how are they manifested in grass-roots project operations. The embeddedness mechanism aims to clarify the "dual-track" politics and how it influences project operation modes and effectiveness.It also helps analyze the heterogeneity of project system, as well as the institutional changes of state governance. In addition to focusing on each mechanism separately, this paper also provides certain prospects from the perspectives of multi-dimensional and comprehensive interactions between multiple mechanisms.
Divine and sacred kingship has long been a central topic in social anthropology. However, previous studies have tended to focus on kingship in small-scale societies, emphasizing the internal dilemmas posed by the pursuit of divinity and sacredness, while paying less attention to kingship systems in large-scale and highly stratified polities. In contemporary Chinese sociology, a major concern lies in exploring the foundations of classical Chinese order through the analytical lens of jia (family/kinship/home) in order to construct an ontology situated within Chinese civilization. Yet such an approach often overlooks the entanglement between kinship and other social facts in concrete historical contexts. Similarly, existing scholarship on Late Shang society and kingship generally treats kinship as a self-evident social fact and regards kingship as a derivative construction emerging upon it.To address these gaps, this paper adopts the Durkheimian concept of "collective representations of death" to unveil the divine foundations of Late Shang kingship, thereby extending the scope of kingship theory and reflecting on the methodological limits of the jia-centered approach. It argues that, in the particular historical formation of the Late Shang, kinship --through which kingship was manifested and represented --was organized around the collective representation of death, and was, in turn, shaped by the logic of kingship itself.Specifically, the paper argues that: (1) rites of passage transformed the deceased into transcendent beings inhabiting different realms, forming the basis for social exchange between the living and the dead; (2) the living frequently commemorated significant ancestors to obtain blessings while gradually forget others, forming complex gift exchange systems between the living and the dead. The supernatural capacities of the dead, as well as the qualifications of the living to communicate with them, were highly unequal: only the king, through the mediation of exalted ancestors, could indirectly commune with the supreme deity; (3) human sacrifice served as an important offering in royal commemoration of the dead. As a "non-normative" form of death, it symbolized the annihilation of the humanity of members belonging to rival polities.Thus, the core structure of Late Shang kingship consisted of an ancestral sequence ascending from the reigning king to the supreme deity, while its boundary was defined by the denial of humanity to those outside the political order of the kingdom. In both its vertical and horizontal dimensions, this configuration resolved the dilemmas of regicide and externality that have long troubled anthropological theories of divine and sacred kingship. The vertical construction of kinship order was, in fact, closely linked to the royal pursuit of the sublime; its highly developed form was parasitic upon that pursuit. That is to say, the entanglement between death, kinship, and kingship yields theoretical significance no less profound than that of jia/kinship itself.The Late Shang emphasis on death and ancestry laid the foundation for the dynastic orders of later periods. Yet its hierarchical, utilitarian, and exclusionary characteristics were precisely what the Western Zhou ideal sought to overcome. The dialectical relationship between the Shang and the Zhou thus constitutes a deep-lying structure in the development of Chinese civilization.
The rural express delivery program serves as a crucial measure for rural revitalization and holds significant importance for the integrated development in urban and rural areas. This study examines rural residents' strategies for picking up the deliveries as a case study and analyzes the social contexts underlying the implementation of express delivery logistics in rural society. It finds that the interplay between market system and social relation is a key factor in the successful implementation of the rural express delivery program. Rural residents adopt diverse strategies for receiving deliveries. They may choose to pick up packages while going to Ganji (market days), or utilize acquaintances to collect parcels on their behalf, and or even pay Modi (motorcycle taxi drivers) to retreat packages. These three distinct delivery collection strategies reflect the close relationship between market system and social relation in rural communities, and their varying forms of interplay. Picking up packages while going to Ganji represents market behaviours within social relation. This economic trade is deeply embedded in the cyclical patterns and order of rural social life and is the result of the stabilization of rural social relation. Social relation imbues the market with its unique character, further facilitating its function as a provider of market resources for rural residents. Asking acquaintances to pick up packages is a relational action within the market system, instrumentally utilizing the relational networks within the grassroots market structures and effectively sustaining market operations. As a model of market-relational integration, the unique occupation of Modi relies on acquaintance social networks. While the relational structure of rural society provides the foundation for its survival, it also constitutes an integral part of the rural market system. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the relationship between market system and social relation in rural China and its impact on the development of modern industry and market.
In response to sweeping critiques of bureaucracy in Western intellectual discourse, the neo-Weberian tradition has adopted a global perspective to examine how bureaucratic institutions take shape across diverse institutional and cultural contexts. Seeking to recover the constructive potential of bureaucracy, this body of work reconsiders Weber's canonical features and explores their pragmatic and normative adaptations. Within this framework, particular attention has been paid to two themes—personal ties and adaptive rule-bending—both of which hold significant relevance for governance practices in China. This article traces the historical origins of the neo-Weberian research, reviews representative empirical studies centered on these two elements, and excavates the theoretical assumptions and normative commitments that underpin them. I argue that the so-called "revival of bureaucracy" is, at its core, a search for how value rationality might be re-integrated into systems increasingly dominated by formal rationality. The use of personal ties or adaptive rule-bending is treated as a strategic means through which morally conscious bureaucrats might absorb, recalibrate, and ultimately incorporate anti-bureaucratic elements into a rationalized administrative order. Yet this technocratic vision of bureaucratic moral agency rests on a universalizing assumption: that commitment to the public sphere, distinct from private interests, constitutes the sole legitimate foundation of bureaucratic ethics. This assumption overlooks the plural moral orders embedded in distinct institutional and historical contexts and forecloses the possibility of alternative sources of organizational legitimacy beyond the bureaucratic form itself. While the neo-Weberian framework offers valuable reparative insights, it remains confined by the limits of its own theoretical imagination. For scholars of Chinese governance, this calls for a renewed effort to locate moral and institutional foundations for bureaucracy that are rooted in indigenous historical experience and ethical traditions.
Fei Xiaotong advocated and practiced a scholarly approach grounded in fieldwork and an emic perspective to study Chinese society. Since the reform and opening-up, his research evolved from longitudinal studies of rural communities in Wujiang, Jiangsu, to investigations of Wujiang's small towns, coastal regions, and border areas. He consistently engaged in "fieldwork and more fieldwork", urging scholars to "go to the villages and towns to observe and reflect". He introduced original concepts and viewpoints such as "rural industrialization", "aiming to enrich the people", the "Southern Jiangsu Model", "small towns, a major issue", "coordinated urban-rural development", "cultural consciousness", and "appreciating the beauty in others". His work, aimed at "scientifically studying Chinese society", "transforming society", "serving the people", and "serving humanity" embodies the modern values of industrialization, urbanization, prosperity for the people, and cultural self-awareness. Consequently, he has advanced the construction of an autonomous discourse system in Chinese sociology and made significant contributions to expanding the theoretical innovation of Chinese modernization.Learning from and carrying on Fei Xiaotong's academic innovation and its modern value must begin with investigative research and refining concepts that capture social phenomena from the practice of China's modernization, thereby enriching and developing the autonomous discourse system of Chinese modernization. It is essential to provide timely and scientific answers to the new questions of our era and combine the inheritance of traditional Chinese culture with the innovation of Chinese modernization theory by addressing practical problems and promoting practical development, and ultimately "writing academic papers on the soil of our homeland". In the face of external risks and challenges, it is crucial to broaden our global perspective, harness Chinese wisdom, and chart a course for global cooperative governance pathways with a proactive historical spirit, and build a beautiful world of "harmony without uniformity".
The mechanism of Model Construction(dianxing chuangjian典型创建) has served as one of the pivotal governance strategies for the CPC since the revolutionary era. Relevant academic research has generally approached the topic in three categories. Identifying and nurturing exemplary models has become a key approach for governments at all levels to advance rural revitalization and enhance the effectiveness of grassroots governance. However, the models at the grassroots level, which serve to attract the resources and attentions from local governments, now face the dilemma characterised by lack of the replicability, weakened capacity for experiential exploration, and"suspension" of knowledge production. This paper proposes a framework based on the relationship between"resources and workload". Using the rural revitalisation initiative in County L as a case study, it analyses the logic of model creation and the mechanisms leading to the difficulties in current grassroots governance practices. This analysis is grounded in the field investigation and in-depth interviews with participants in the government. Under the logic of resource allocation, exemplary models have become a crucial foundation for local governments to secure project fundings and attentions from higher level authorities. However, the selective allocation of governance resources has failed to substantially enhance the task capacity of grassroots organizations, resulting in short in representation. Moreover, the shortage of high quality human resources is another challenge that grassroots units struggle to overcome through model construction. Under the organizational task logic, being an exemplary model often brings new role tensions, significant increase of derivative tasks, particularly the burden of information production. The mismatch between resource allocation and organizational task-bearing capacity resulting from the convergence of these two logics led to the formation of the aforementioned model construction dilemma.
For Chinese people, the choice between traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Western medicine is a common decision faced when seeking treatment or maintaining health. Although previous studies have explored the mechanisms underlying the "educational gradient in health" from individual, family, and social perspectives, findings based on the Western medical paradigm have largely overlooked the potential influence of TCM preferences in healthcare behavior. Using data from the Chinese General Social Survey and an ordered chain mediation model, this study finds that the behavior of "seeking TCM" (i.e., a stronger preference for TCM over Western medicine) can serve as a mediating variable between educational attainment and self-rated health. This result remains robust after conducting both robustness and endogeneity tests. Regarding the explanatory mechanisms, the self-assessed perception of health among Chinese people, coupled with the increasingly sensitive physical awareness associated with higher education levels, makes highly educated individuals more prone to perceive themselves as unhealthy and to engage in healthcare-seeking behaviors. Compared to Western medicine, TCM's philosophy of "preventing illness before it occurs" and its relational model of collaborative patient-doctor care can more effectively address self-assessed health concerns. Therefore, individuals with higher levels of education are more likely to choose TCM, and ultimately experience an improvement in their self-rated health due to the effective response to self-diagnosis. The research results provide empirical support for the formulation of health policies tailored to China's context to promote high quality national health.
"New Northeast Literature" has revealed the profound dimension of historical experience and transitional memory underlying the so-called "Northeast problem", emerging as a vital cultural lens for understanding knowledge production during China's transitional era. This paper explores the social implications of New Northeast Literature from a sociology of literature perspective, uncovering its connection to the subjective world of individuals navigating social transition. It argues that the representation of class experiences constitutes the core through which this literary phenomenon transcends its regional origins and evokes broad social resonance. Such representations go beyond the restoration of dignity of the "father's generation" by the "son's generation" within working-class families. Rather, they re-articulate and re-perceive class experience within the shifting discourse of class, sparking intergenerational affective resonance around themes of class mobility, anxiety, and uncertainty. Drawing on their own life upbringing experience, the writers born in the 1980s translate familial memories of class experience into tangible literary language, transforming personal trauma into an embrace of working-class ethics and a nostalgic yet distanced reminiscence of the revolutionary idealism. As contemporary youth confront the anxiety arising from class solidification and unstable class identity, they find an implicit yet pervasive emotional resonance with the "class faller" figures depicted in New Northeast Literature—a resonance deeply rooted in their lived experience of accelerated social transformation and the loosening of identity hierarchies. Ultimately, the paper reveals literature's role as a medium of collective memory and public reflection in times of social transition, underscoring the multifaceted ways individuals navigate self-worth and identity amid structural uncertainty.
Building on the sociological insight into the "social construction of reality", this study examines how scholar-officials (士大夫) in traditional China constructed their social worlds through everyday activities that served as the basis for social action. Our study begins with the observation that, throughout Chinese history, Confucian culture had fostered a dualism between a family-state-oriented spiritual world and a secular world of kin-based social relations. Although these two worlds integrated, they were fraught with tensions, imparting distinctive characteristics to China's state-building and bureaucratic system. Building on this observation, this study applies a micro-sociological analysis of the diaries and correspondences of Zeng Guofan, a prominent late Qing scholar-official. We explore the relationship between Zeng's social activities and his spiritual pursuits, with a particular focus on the con struction of his social world. Our research reveals that Zeng's spiritual pursuits and social activities were largely distinct from one another and rarely intersected. We measure and analyze types of social groups with whom Zeng interacted, the interaction patterns both within and between groups, and the structural features of the social network centered on Zeng Guofan. While Zeng's two worlds remained distinct, his social world was structured by a"differential mode of association"(差序格局), a relational pattern that was dynamic and evolved over time. By leveraging the depth of a case-study approach, this study makes two main contributions. First, it develops a research approach of combining theoretical insights and analytical concepts for examining individuals' social worlds, a central concern in sociology. Second, it proposes and demonstrates a set of empirical strategies for operationalizing textual data drawn from diary and correspondence. We hope this study will stimulate further research on the social worlds of scholar- officials in Chinese history and their implications for understanding governance in contemporary China.
This study employs the "symbolic boundaries" theory from cultural sociology as its framework. Based on interviews with 20 florists holding bachelor's degrees, it explores how educated youth leverage cultural enchantment to elevate the status of skilled occupations. The research focuses on two core issues: empirically, how highly educated youth transform their professional image through specific practices; and theoretically how skilled professions achieve status elevation with the aid of cultural enchantment. The term "cultural enchantment" as defined in this study does not refer to a profession gaining elevated status due to changes in its intrinsic cultural attributes. Instead, it denotes a scenario where enchantment occurs under new evaluative dimensions created by the reconstruction of symbolic boundaries. The driving mechanism does not stem from the cultural accumulation of the profession itself but arises from updates in the social classification system. The study argues that, distinct from the power determinism and social closure theories associated with traditional professional status, skilled professions characterized by non-standardization—due to the diversity of their operational skills and product evaluation criteria—provide space for innovating evaluation models through the reconstruction of symbolic boundaries, thereby achieving professional status enhancement via cultural enchantment. Specifically, florists reshape the value evaluation system of skilled labor through the reconstruction of symbolic boundaries in three dimensions: the transformation of products into artworks (from floral material transactions to aesthetic creations), the elitization of identity (from flower arrangers to florists), and the theatricalization of scenarios (from shelf-style transactions to professional displays). Ultimately, this enables florists to break away from the traditional trajectory of the blue-collar class and achieve professional status transformation. By revealing the mechanism through which cultural enchantment drives the elevation of professional status, this study offers a new pathway to address the structural employment dilemma caused by the mismatch between youth employment aspirations and existing job supply, and to establish a more diverse professional evaluation model.
This paper explores how Fei Xiaotong, through his own academic practice, laid the foundation for constructing an independent system of knowledge for Chinese sociology. Against the backdrop of developing a philosophy and social sciences with Chinese characteristics in current time, reviewing Fei Xiaotong's academic journey holds significant enlightenment implications. Fei Xiaotong's scholarly path began with a broad engagement in and deep reflection upon both Chinese and Western intellectual traditions. He consistently grounded his work in the realities of Chinese society, rejecting parasitic scholarship pursued solely "for its own sake", and established instead the scholarly aspiration of "enriching the people" and the research methodology of "seeking knowledge from reality". His outstanding contributions include a series of original concepts with universal explanatory power. For instance, the idea of "differential mode of association" profoundly reveals the characteristics of Chinese social structure, and the concept of the "pluralistic and integrated pattern of the Chinese nation" provides a theoretical framework for understanding ethnic relations. During the period of restoring and rebuilding sociology in China, Fei Xiaotong emphasized the necessity of adhering to Marxist guidance and closely integrating sociological research with China's social realities, thereby laying the groundwork for a sociology that serves the nation. Fei Xiaotong's academic practice demonstrates that constructing an independent system of knowledge for Chinese sociology requires being rooted in local conditions while engaging with the world, achieving scholarly self-awareness on the basis of cultural self-awareness.
Through a case study of the Yangyu rural photography project, this paper seeks to present the situated identity practices experienced by middle-class photographers in the context of slash careers. It attempts to explain why urban residents with stable primary occupations repeatedly participate in rural photography projects and immerse themselves in "living like artists" during short-term residencies, even when livelihood pressures or mobility demands are not the primary motivations. Within a highly institutionalized career system, the primary occupation of photographer slash-line visual creators provides security and dignity. Yet it also dictates their daily life through demanding work schedules and relentless performance expectations. Often photography—a relatively stable hobby—is squeezed into the fleeting hours after work, leaving them torn and burdened between their professional responsibilities and creative aspirations. Faced with this situation, they often embrace the "artist" identity as a source of support. By leveraging the elevated status mainstream narratives assign to artists and their close association with creativity, they find a fulcrum for self-meaning, repeatedly adjusting their commitment between institutional dependence and autonomous needs. Thus, entering visual communities for local creation becomes a crucial way for them to pursue artistic identity. In terms of interaction dynamics, the visual community is guided and organized by "artist-journalists", presenting itself as a collaborative circle that blends public engagement with individual expression while maintaining a non-hierarchical style. This structure allows creators to transform their private creative persistence into a shared, discussable practice through relatively stable interactions. Regarding content, this community emphasizes field-style documentary filming of daily life. Through collective organization and interpretation of these images, it constructs narrative spaces that connect fragmented shooting experiences into coherent expressive threads, achieving an aesthetic reconstruction of everyday existence. Entering the exhibition phase, the intervention of the county-level public cultural system and curatorial team provides artists with a path to public recognition through both offline displays and online dissemination. Repeated public narration and reevaluation of the works' value also enable the photographers to achieve self-affirmation of their artistic identity. However, local creation within the visual community operates on the premise of "short-term residencies", where the construction of artistic identity often manifests as a phased self-narrative. On one hand, rural photography projects formally distance themselves from urban daily life; on the other, participants deliberately maintain a state of "both intimate and distant" relationships. This dynamic makes "living like an artist" easier to stimulate and affirm within the project itself, yet difficult to seamlessly carry back into the photographer's post-departure daily lives. Moreover, this phased self-narrative is paradoxically shaped by the temporal constraints of primary occupations and the logic of capital. The redistribution of time and energy presents an inescapable practical challenge for nearly all participants. Consequently, some creators do not entirely separate their professional identities from their creative sphere; instead, they leverage existing social relationships as a "more efficient" resource for their work. Economic considerations also become embedded in the selection and curation of creative content through more subtle, everyday ways. Based on these observations, this paper challenges existing interpretations that frame multiple professional identities primarily as livelihood strategies or tools for mobility. Instead, it argues that the identity construction of photographers with a slash identity should be understood as a situated identity practice unfolding within institutionalized career systems. This identity construction temporarily repairs the oppressive life experiences imposed by the time structure of primary occupations and rebuilds self-meaning through phased engagement in visual communities and local creative activities. Yet, within the cycle of returning to primary occupations and sustained participation, it exposes an irreconcilable tension between dependence and autonomy. The study enriches our understanding of the life circumstances and identity experiences of contemporary middle-class groups within the context of slash careers.
Taking the establishment of the Pingxiang Coal Mines as a case study, this paper explores the specific mechanisms through which modern industry took root in late Qing China. A definitive feature of Chinese society at the time was the central position occupied by the gentry class within its social structure, coupled with the absence of modern legal systems and a functioning state apparatus. This constituted a major divergence between China's social environment and those of Western Europe and Japan during the introduction of modern industry. The impact of this divergence on China's modern industrialisation was complex: some attempts to introduce industrial enterprises failed due to opposition from the gentry, while others succeeded. This paper examines the Pingxiang Coal Mines as one such relatively successful case. It argues that the stratification and internal connections within the gentry class played a crucial role in integrating the enterprise into local society. Upper-tier gentry figures such as Wen Tingshi served a dual role as both state bureaucrats and local elites. The ethical and interest tensions inherent in these identities fostered a persuasive transmission process from self-strengthening bureaucrats to upper gentry and further to lower-tier elites. Local gentry, drawing upon existing gentry networks, formed an intermediary group that facilitated communication between enterprises and local communities, promoting the alignment of interests between the two. As a result, the Pingxiang Coal Mines achieved large-scale acquisition of local industries and the initiation of modern industrial production, thereby driving much broader social transformation. This paper suggests that, under specific historical conditions, the collision between China's traditional social environment and modern industry may have configured to forge a unique development trajectory, generating a new power-interest structure between enterprises and local society, triggering industrial transformation and comprehensive social change. The paper reveals the intrinsic connection between China's industrial development and social transformation, providing a reference point for understanding contemporary relations between enterprises and society.
This paper analyzes and discusses Dewey's curriculum reform to specifically reveal the substantive content and empirical basis underlying the iconic concept of "social control" in American social theory. In his dialogues with progressive educators, Dewey explicitly opposed the notion of "individual freedom without social control" and advocated instead for "individual freedom within social control". This viewpoint was concretely manifested through the curriculum reform of the Laboratory School. In the field of education, social control refers to teachers guiding students to immerse themselves in the "situations" presented by the curriculum through the implementation of curriculum plans and the use of teaching materials, so that students can perceive the guidance and control of social forces in terms of their behaviors, ideas and emotions. Applying an analytical framework that examines the interaction between "action" and "environment" further illuminates the theoretical implications of social control. On the one hand, Dewey engaged with Rousseau's theory of natural education, arguing that individual actions are inevitably controlled by the social environment, and the traditions of civilization hold indelible educational significance. On the other hand, he opposed Durkheimian social education, maintaining that social control that truly fulfills its educational function cannot be separated from individuals' internal responses, and arguing that activating individuals' behavioral states through the "stimulus-response" mechanism constitutes a more important educational end. Overall, Dewey sought to use the concept of social control to describe a state of life where individuals wholeheartedly "act" in an "environment" with inherent meaning, and on this basis, to reconceptualize the relationship between individual freedom and civilizations. Dewey's concept of social control shaped the problem awareness of early American social theory and is intrinsically consistent with the connotation of "the pedagogical power"(教化权力) as expounded by Hsiao-Tung Fei. Clarifying this connection will help us reflect on the complex relationship between individual freedom and civilized traditions, and inspires actions based on sound judgment.
Based on in-depth interviews and observations of 20 urban families, this paper takes fathers' participation in childrearing through sports as its empirical object and examines the practice forms and action motivations of what it conceptualizes as sport-based fathering. The study finds that fathers' sport-based childrearing practices can be divided, in terms of form, into intermittent participation and routinized participation; in terms of motivation, they are shaped by two major orientations: relationship development and social reproduction. The former emphasizes intimate companionship, emotional compensation, and the cultivation of parent-child relationships, while the latter points to child training, intergenerational expectations, paternal authority, and the reproduction of family divisions of labor. By cross-analyzing practice forms and motivational structures, the article identifies four ideal types of fatherhood: ritual-symbolic fatherhood, affective-assistive fatherhood, strategic-conservative fatherhood, and institutionalized-companionate fatherhood. These four types show that the transformation of fatherhood does not necessarily involve a simultaneous shift in both the forms of involvement and the motivations behind them; rather, there may be a decoupling between the two: occasional participation may stem from a desire for closeness, whereas regular involvement may serve to continue shaping and disciplining children and maintaining existing family roles. The study further finds that the child's gender influences a father's decision-making logic, resulting in a differentiated distributions of fathering styles between father-son and father-daughter pairs. The article thus argues that the transformation of fatherhood is not a linear process from absence to participation, but rather an internally differentiated process generated through different combinations of participation forms and action motivations. Understanding contemporary fatherhood practices therefore requires moving beyond whether fathers are present or how much they participate, and it must further examine the logic by which fathers enter the parenting arena.
When it comes to technological transformation in rural e-commerce, the role of marginal farmers cannot be overlooked. Marginal peasant households are the key drivers behind the emergence and development of e-commerce villages. Previous studies on the development of e-commerce villages have yet to establish an explanatory link between micro actions to macro outcomes. This study is grounded in a case analysis of Nanzhuang Village in Cao County, Shandong Province, China. Through field surveys, data are collected on the village's social networks, the diffusion of e-commerce skills, and the engagement of households in e-commerce entrepreneurship. First, the core-periphery model proposed by Borgatti and Everett is applied to to classify the social structural positions of households within the village. Analysis of the dynamic e-commerce entrepreneurship participation rates across these positions reveals that the earliest e-commerce entrepreneurs come from semi-peripheral or peripheral positions, rather than from the social core in the village. Further analysis of the e-commerce skill diffusion network data using blockmodeling and relational event modeling (REM) indicates that the diffusion of e-commerce skills in village is also primarily driven by marginal peasant households. Furthermore, this study investigates the dimension of collective attitudes. Through examining mutual influences among households and combining computational simulations with empirical observational data, this study offers a bottom-up, generative explanation for the emergence of e-commerce villages. It seeks to reveal the critical conditions and underlying mechanisms that enable marginal households to be the first to trigger this transformation. The analysis finds that the initial open-minded attitude toward e-commerce entrepreneurship of marginal peasant households served as a crucial condition in the formation of e-commence villages. At the same time, the emergence of such villages is also closely tied to the renewal of collective mindset in the village led by marginal peasant households.
The rise of the creative industries reflects emerging dynamics in contemporary China's economy and labor. This article examines creative labor in China's video game industry, exploring how game developers' labor subjectivity is embedded in the production process and how it is organized and mobilized. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 42 semi-structured interviews, the study finds that the game industry recruits a group of developers with a distinctive form of subjectivity, referred to as ganke(肝客), through game development competitions. Rooted in gaming culture and long-term gaming practices, this subjectivity manifests both as a passion-driven willingness to engage in high-intensity labor and as creative enthusiasm coupled with strong gamer identity. However, under increasingly modularized production practices, firms do not incorporate this subjectivity as a whole, but rather differentially mobilize or suppress its various dimensions. The article conceptualizes this mechanism as fragmented appropriation. Specifically, the high-intensity labor represented by gan(肝) is institutionalized and transformed into stable forms of overwork, while dimensions such as creative passion and gamer identity are suppressed. In response, developers adopt various coping strategies: some seek promotion in pursuit of more creative work, while others channel their creative passion into side projects, gradually withdrawing emotional investment from their daily labor. While existing research tends to treat subjectivity as a resource that can be mobilized as a whole, this article emphasizes the complexity and multidimensionality of subjectivity. It introduces the concept of fragmented appropriation to capture a mechanism that operates on distinct dimensions of subjectivity, distinguishing it from approaches that treat subjectivity as a unified whole. In doing so, this article reveals the operational logic, practical processes, and consequences of this mechanism, thereby advancing theoretical discussions on the interaction between labor subjectivity and labor control in creative labor research.
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