Chinese Journal of Sociology

The Pietist Ethic and the Spirit of Prussian Bureaucracy

LU Chang, MENG Ke

2022, 42(2): 1-28.

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Rationalization occupies a central place in Max Weber's thought. However, Weber's discussion of rationalization in the administrative sphere (i.e., the emergence of modern bureaucracy) is not as detailed and systematic as his analysis of rationalization in the economic sphere (i.e., the birth of capitalism). Specifically, Weber did not reveal the religious and ethical basis behind the emergency of rational bureaucracy as he did with Calvinism behind the spirit of capitalism. In Weber's Economy and Society, the discussion of the administrative rationalization seems to make a "leap" of argument from the economic to the administrative sphere, which seems not particularly illuminating to our understanding of the complexity of the administrative rationalization, especially its underlying ethics. Therefore, in this paper we first return to the historical context in which Weber's theory of bureaucratization came into being, namely the Prussian bureaucracy from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. By looking into the historical process of rationalization in the Prussian administration, we explore the important role of Pietist ethics in the rise and fall of the spirit of the Prussian bureaucracy. The study offers an analysis of how Pietism shaped the Prussian bureaucracy through its religious doctrines of "emotion", "worldliness", and "authority". In so doing, the paper touches upon a topic that is not addressed by Weber in his theory of bureaucracy. Finally, we discuss the differences between the spirit of bureaucracy and the spirit of capitalism, and the possible interactions between the two processes, and propose the possibility of exploring the interplay between rationalization processes in different social domains for future research.

Robinson Crusoe’s Trade and Labour: Daniel Defoe’s Critique of Political Economy of Maritime Empires

KANG Zixing

2022, 42(2): 29-59.

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From the perspective of social theory, Daniel Defoe's Novel Robinson Crusoe is a fable of importance. The tale of Robinson Crusoe is a product not just of the European social transformation but also of the expansion of western civilization. In Defoe's view, fiction was a special kind of historical writing. In Robinson Crusoe, he expressed his thoughts on the social and political order of his time. Through Robinson's adventure, Defoe exposed the enslavement of colonies by European countries, and criticised the injustice of maritime empires at their foundation. In the desert island, Robinson used his hands to meet his own needs, creat wealth and restore the civilisation. The Robison in island was a metaphor that presented the natural laws of production and order, and demonstrated the natural foundation of wealth and civilisation. For Defoe,wealth and civilisation were rooted in natural reason and human labor. More importantly, through Robinson's interaction with Friday, Defoe allowed the readers to see the noble nature of "barbarians". By searching for the origins of civilisation and barbarism, Defoe removed their opposition and placed them in a continuous and unified historical process. The distinction between literary and wild could only reflect the difference between production techniques and customs. Civilised and barbarous society shared the same human foundations and moral laws. A unified system of political economy, which conforms to the laws of natural justice and involves different traditions of civilisation, can lay its foundation on the common human nature. In Defoe's view of history, we can find a dialectic of nature and civilisation, according to which, different civilisations and traditions can communicate and cooperate with each other.

“Melancholic Children”: Does Cram School Participation Lead to Negative Emotions? Causal Inference Based on Chinese Education Panel Survey (CEPS) Data

LI Shiyuan, LIU Aiyu

2022, 42(2): 60-93.

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This study focuses on the causal relationship between middle school students'participation in cram school and their emotional well-being. Our analysis is based on Chinese Education Panel Survey data (CEPS 2013-2015). We construct instrumental variables and introduce lagged variables to mitigate possible endogeneity problems. The major findings are as follows:Firstly,the participation of socio-economically disadvantaged students in cram school has significantly exacerbated their negative emotions. Students with advantaged family socioeconomic status (SES) have shown better ability in emotional regulation,and they are more likely to be psychologically immune to specific negative emotions. Secondly,we explore the class heterogeneity in the aspect of emotional regulation ability. Specifically,we propose a preliminary theoretical framework based on typology of parenting styles and related empirical findings. We speculate that parents from different social background may respond differently to their children's negative emotions,while there may also be intergroup differences in children's own emotional regulation ability. Empirically,we examine the class differences in the performance of emotional regulation of the students in cram school,and apply the counterfactual simulation approach to further illustrate the association between the group difference in emotional regulation and the group heterogeneity of the depressive effects from cram school participation. The finding provides supportive evidences for our theoretical framework. In sum,our study is helpful to better understand the implication of emotional health inequality that may derive from the shadow education system.

Marketization of Educational Resources and Individual Choice: A Study of Heterogeneous Treatment Effect of Private Tutoring in Middle Schools

LI Angran

2022, 42(2): 94-125.

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In recent decades, with the rapid marketization of educational resources in K-12 education, private tutoring has become widely popular in China, Yet, previous research has not reached a consensus on the impact of private tutoring on academic outcomes, and has also overlooked the influence of individuals' choice under Chinese exam-oriented educational system. By using data from the China Education Panel Study (CFPS), this study examines the heterogeneous treatment effects of private tutoring on eighth graders' academic performance from the perspective of individual choices. The results show that propensities to participate in private tutoring can differentiate the class disparities among middle school students in terms of their individual, family, school and other parenting factors. Furthermore, the results indicate that private tutoring on average has limited impacts on academic achievement, net of all background factors. However, students whose propensities to participate in private tutoring is in the middle range tend to benefit the most from private tutoring. For both the students of socioeconomically disadvantaged families with low propensities and their advantaged counterparts with high propensities, private tutoring has little effect on their academic performance. Sensitivity analysis further shows that the heterogeneous effects of private tutoring differ in cognitive ability, subject types, and tutoring periods. The finding carries out important implications for understanding the consequences of China's policy interventions in reducing educational inequality.

Psychoanalysis and War Experience：War as the Main Thread of Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis

ZHANG Weizhuo

2022, 42(2): 126-150.

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The revolutionary significance of psychoanalysis in the history of thought is closely related to its understanding of war experience. Since the end of the 19th century, war has been part of historical constants that defines the overall experience of modern people. Sigmund Freud's Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis during the WW II serves as a core interpretive text for us to understand his theoretical system from the WW II experience. Introductory Lectures provides us with a systematic account of the early achievements of the psychoanalysis movement as well as some embryonic ideas of Freud's later psychoanalytic theory. More importantly, the War constitutes the main thread of Introductory Lectures' vision and theoretical development. War experiences seem to rekindle the ideological origin of psychoanalysis and force the author to explore the deeper world of human nature. This study focuses on Freud's idea of war and the general experience of modern people. Taking Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis as the core text, combined with Freud's other major works in his early and late stages, the paper attempts to answer the following three questions:First, what kind of human primitive experience can be restored by psychoanalysis as philosophy or "the first philosophy" in the perspective of war? Second, what does psychoanalysis as sociology reveal about the everyday state of human beings? Third, when psychoanalysis as a "re-education" theory intervenes in daily experience, what difficulties will it encounter, and what kind of educational art will it develop? In Freud's thought, psychoanalysis as the first philosophy exposes the conflicting self with various intentions in the state of war, and gradually reveals the self's Eros and the instinct of death. On this basis, psychoanalysis as sociology presents the face of war in daily life and its essence of entanglement and conflict between human erotic instinct and death instinct. Finally, psychoanalysis as a new educational theory helps guiding Eros and restraining death instinct by pointing out the limits, conditions and future hopes of modern education.

“Intoxication” or “Sobriety”: A Research on Walter Benjamin’s Exploration of Art Criticism in Jena Romanticism

ZHANG Yuqing

2022, 42(2): 151-178.

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At the end of the 19th century, the tension between rationality and irrationality constituted the spiritual climate of Germany. On the one hand, more profit and higher efficiency, regarded as "progress" of individuality and society, had created a more prosperous material world but failed to provide population with inner peace and satisfaction. On the other hand, in order to fight against the boredom of the material civilisation, the youth indulged in subjective fantasy and particular experiences in the name of "Romanticism". It allowed people to temporarily escape from the problems of excessive rationalisation but couldn't help them achieve true redemption of the soul. It is in this context that Benjamin carried out his early representative work The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism and other contemporaneous studies on Romanticism. In these works, Benjamin clarified the core spirit of Romanticism, especially Jena Romanticism based on their concept of "criticism". He pointed out the ethos of Romanticism was not about being intoxicated and fanatical, but calm and sober. Rather than subjective fantasies, it pursued objective truth through serious contemplation, and rather than narrow particularities, it concerned with the history of human spirit as a whole. Benjamin's discussion on art criticism and the sober character of Romanticism sheds a light on the relationship between literature, history and truth, as well as the effective ways to deal with the crisis of modernity. In addition, through the elaboration of Adorno and others, this discussion has had a profound impact on the Frankfurt school and even on the critical theory in Europe as a whole. Benjamin's work transcends the category of art, and echoes the social reality of Germany at the turn of the century, shares the common vision of German social theory. Therefore, for the purpose of understanding the value of Romanticism and Benjamin's contribution to social theory, this paper builds its discussion by focusing on the concept of "criticism".

The Mystery of Life and Transcendence of Society: The Ineffable Pain, Imagination, and Spirits for Public Opinions among the Ethnic Jingpo in Southwest China

ZHANG Wenyi

2022, 42(2): 179-208.

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This paper discusses several events that have shaped the lives and communities of the Jingpo people in Southwest China since the 21st century. While a single event has its own logics as a result of subjective choices and social forces, but being placed side by side with life time events and social history, it can appear anonymous and irrelevant. Anonymity refers to the unspeakable pain, inexplicable sentimentality and nostalgia, not in words, but in tones and eyes, and in the atmosphere and temperament of the entire community. Anonymity is manifested as a new disease that is incurable and has not yet been named. Disconnection stems from the breakdown of the relationship between man and land, from the increasingly dysfunctional marriage system and dissipation of the moral world. The old gods left but the new ones have not yet arrived. People are dominated by desires but unable to fulfil them. This "nothingness" brings confusion and decadence of the people, and anxiety of the community. The handling of "nothingness" reflects the transcendence of society and the mystery of life, underscoring a period when the old structure is disappearing and the new one is slowly burgeoning. It is a time that people are subjected to moral suspension. Thus, to understand the flow of events and erratic life experience, we need to ground ourselves on a structural-functional way of thinking, however, no less importantly, we also need to investigate the entanglement between people's desires, feelings, effects, motivations and their societal surroundings.

Parental Educational Assortative Mating and Children’s Academic Performance

LI Anqi

2022, 42(2): 209-242.

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Compared with those from homogeneous marriages with lower parental education level,children from hypergamy marriages or homogeneous marriages with high-level education perform much better academically. Children from families of hypergamy marriage also tend to outperform those from hypogamy marriage families. There is also a diverging gap effect in educational assortative mating-the wider the marital educational gap,the better academic performance for the children from hypergamy marriage but the worse for the children from hypogamy marriage. Further more,the study finds that the level of parental unity plays a partial mediating role on the impact of marital education matching on children's academic performance. Among them,parent-child communication is the most effective way to activate family cultural capital. Parents from homogeneous marriage with high educational level are the ones who devote the most time in their children's upbringing and enjoy a closer parent-child relationship. However,in hypergamy,father and mother tend to form a complementary relationship in the division of parenting to improve the level of "co-parenting alliance" and the "new type of family cultural capital" can be activated more effectively to promote children academic performance. Even though educational assortative mating has become a "breeding ground" for inequality reproduction,a high level of "co-parenting alliance"may help slow down the transmission of intergenerational inequality.

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