Table of Content

20 September 2025, Volume 45 Issue 5

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From "Deduction" to "Dialectics": The Methodological Foundation and Evolution of Marx's Historical Sociology

Yang LIU

2025, 45(5):  1-25. 

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Karl Marx pioneered one of classical traditions in historical sociology. In order to explore the uniqueness of Karl Marx's historical sociology, it is essential to delve into its methodological foundations. This study traces the formation and evolution of the methodological basis of Marx's historical sociology through his four distinct understandings of "history". In his critique of German historicism, particularly Hegel's philosophy of history, Marx developed the first relatively complete methodological framework for historical sociology: the historical deduction of production. This approach employs historical deduction, taking production as its logical starting point of historical analysis to deduce the formation of human society, thereby achieving a conclusion of social history over extended periods. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx refined this methodology through his historical analysis of "class". By critiquing Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Marx began to consider how to apply dialectics to political economy. Thus, Marx developed a more refined methodological framework for his historical sociology—"Dialectics of Phenomena in History"—whereby any existence is historically generated, and entities in the process of generation can only approximate the factuality of existence through continuous "sublation"("Aufhebung") within the historical process. When confronting different analytical objectives, one must first establish distinct historical phenomena according to dialectical logic. When confronting historical phenomena serving different cognitive purposes, one must select distinct causal analysis strategies. In response to the critique of Capital, Marx made further, albeit unfinished, reflections on the conditionality and non-necessity of generative history. Rethinking the methodological foundations of Karl Marx's historical sociology also provides insights for historical sociology research oriented towards social theory.

Meritocratic Professionalism: The Cultural Logic of Skill Embeddedness among Chinese Musicians in Germany

Jiaxuan YU

2025, 45(5):  26-56. 

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This study investigates the emergence of meritocratic professionalism among Chinese musicians in Germany. The Chinese and German societies differ in terms of both culture and institutions, which results in differences in the meaning, construction, and social consequences of interpersonal relationships. In Chinese Society, the guanxi-oriented concept is one of the most important guiding principles for handling all aspects of social life. The organizational structure of Chinese society is characterized by the chaxugeju, in which people distinguish insiders from outsiders in a self-centered, gradational way. In such a system, guanxi are often built on (quasi-)ascribed ties such as kinship. In contrast, the German classical music field exhibits a typical community-oriented logic of relationship building, which emphasizes achieved community formation based on individual interests or affinities. In the German classical music field, the general trajectory of professional socialization leads musicians to gradually internalize the significance of both social relationships and professional skills, fostering an integrated professionalism that values both dimensions. However, influenced by the guanxi ethic embedded in the chaxugeju pattern, Chinese musicians often cannot fully perceive and understand the local logic of social embeddedness grounded in professional communities, resulting in an overwhelming emphasis on skill embeddedness and the development of meritocratic professionalism. By displaying the concrete process through how new professional values emerge among Chinese migrants, this study moves a step forward from prevailing accounts that conceptualize cross-cultural adaptation as a process of selectively adopting or combining pre-existing cultures. It demonstrates that such new values may not derive directly from the migrants' culture of origin nor fully align with the host culture, but instead take shape as novel cultural forms constructed through the tensions between the two which shaped by the interplay of multiple dimensions of embeddedness.

How Public Opinion Reshapes Grassroots Governance in the Digital Age: A Three-Tiered Analytical Framework

Yiran ZHOU

2025, 45(5):  57-88. 

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Using the primary and secondary education system as a case study, this paper examines the impact mechanism of public opinion in the digital age on grassroots governance. Departing from previous risk governance research that treats information transmission as an exogenous parameter, this article constructs an analytical framework of "information transmission transformation + governance structure transition + risk constraint reshaping", and introduces two concepts of "public visibility" and "superior visibility". This framework reveals the triple mechanism through which public opinion reshapes grassroots governance. At the level of information transmission, the traditional closed and hierarchical information control model is replaced by a two-way feedback mechanism. Horizontally, the public transforms from passive recipients of information to active producers, significantly enhancing information visibility through digital media and other channels. Vertically, information transcends hierarchical barriers, achieving direct access to higher levels of government, thereby weakening the original information advantage of the grassroots government. At the level of governance structure, public opinion promotes a transition from fragmented governance to collaborative governance. The public directly participates in the governance process through the expression of public opinion, shifting from external monitors to internal participants. Higher-level governments, leveraging digital monitoring tools, oversee local affairs much more closely, breaking down traditional boundaries of territorial administration and forming a horizontally and vertically coordinated governance network. At the level of risk constraints, the enhanced dual visibility of information subjects the grassroots governments to the dual pressures of public scrutiny and higher-level supervision, transforming grassroots risk constraints from elastic to rigid, and significantly compressing the risk avoidance space. The governance transformation driven by public opinion also spawns new structural contradictions: an inversion of governance capacity and responsibility risk, and a conflict between governance logic and the governance environment, leaving the grassroots facing unprecedented governance dilemmas. This paper provides a novel theoretical perspective for understanding governance transformation in the digital age.

Universal Particularism and the Indigenous Paradigm of Guanxi Research: Taking "Attitude" as the Core Concept

Qifeng HE

2025, 45(5):  89-113. 

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The concept of guanxi differs between Chinese and Western contexts. As an indigenous Chinese concept, guanxi embodies the feature of "universal particularism". This paper aims to explore this characteristic and attempt to construct an indigenous paradigm for the study of guanxi. Specifically, "particularism" is manifested in the fact that the understanding of all relationships is inseparable from specific actors and their contextual settings, nor can it be fully explained by existing structural indicators. "Universality", on the other hand, is reflected in the fact that all relational practices adhere to the ethical principles of a"differential mode of association", proposed by Fei Xiaotong, meaning that actors inevitably define relationships through an internal moral compass of"putting oneself in others' shoes". This makes "particularity" a universal logic that permeates different contexts.This paper argues that the core of understanding guanxi lies in grasping the "attitude" based on the actor's perspective. This attitude is a comprehensive consideration of objective factors such as identity foundations, degrees of closeness, and reciprocity, as well as subjective factors including interaction history, current circumstances, and the actor's mindset. It represents the actor's integrated internal judgment when faced with a specific individual. This research paradigm has achieved a dual theoretical shift in guanxi studies: first, it moves away from "instrumental rationality" towards an "ethical foundation", rejecting the simplification of guanxi as utilitarian tools for the exchange of interests. Instead, it first places relationships within the ethical framework of the "differential mode of association", emphasizing how moral practices such as"putting oneself in others' shoes" and "empathy" profoundly shape the dynamics of relationship; Second, it shifts from "structural analysis" to an "actor's perspective", transcending the binary division between formal and informal relationships, and focusing on how actors' subjective "attitudes" dynamically construct the overall nature of relationships.

Between Affection and Righteousness: A Study on the Master-Apprentice Relationship from the Perspective of Ethics of Social Actions

Penghan YU

2025, 45(5):  114-141. 

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Existing research on Chinese apprenticeship system has primarily focused on its characteristics as a form of wage labor, while failing to address the underlying ethics of action-specifically, the distinctive "patriarchal" features inherent to the system. From the perspective of behavioural ethics, the possibility of establishing a master-apprentice relationship lies in the tendency to integrate new social relationships outside the family into existing ethical frameworks. Pre-Qin Confucian literatures encapsulate the ethical essence of master-apprentice bonds as "between affection(En) and righteousness(Yi)": the character-building objectives of their interactions define the ethical dimension of "Yi"; while their shared daily life and moral exchanges grounded in shared values define the ethical dimension of "En". This ethical relationship manifested in mourning rituals through the practice of three-year period of "mourning with the heart".The master-apprentice relationship exhibits remarkable flexibility in China's historical records: on the one hand, while quasi-familial phenomena were commonplace in Chinese society, written norms lacked explicit standards for such a relationship, rendering it exceptionally adaptable compared to other social relations. On the other hand, the master-apprentice relation had appeared intermittently throughout historical records, with its visibility generally correlating with the prominence of Confucian thought movements outside official institutions. This flexibility stem from the subjectivity with which actors perceive bonds of obligation and gratitude. Unlike foundational Confucian relationships such as father-son or monarch-subject, the master-apprentice relationship lacked objectively defined criteria. It was not anchored in clear blood ties or contractual agreements, consequently, the ritual system was incapable of imposing rigid and one-size-fits-all rules. Instead, it preserved a foundation of basic etiquette while allowing actors to express sentiments based on subjective emotions. This dual-dimensional perception of affection(En) and righteousness(Yi) continues to shape contemporary Chinese interpersonal interactions.

Two Origins of Max Weber's Concept of "Disenchantment": A Genealogical Examination

Zhejun YU

2025, 45(5):  142-172. 

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This paper attempts to trace the origins of Max Weber's concept of "disenchantment"(Entzauberung) and its associated narrative through a combination of etymological analysis and and intellectual genealogy. It identifies two primary sources: German Romanticism represented by Schiller, and the 17th-century Dutch theologian Balthasar Bekker. In his work The Gods of Greece, Schiller introduced the concept of "de-deification" (Entgötterung), which was not merely a nostalgic or anti-Enlightenment gesture, but an attempt to improve humanity through the divine. German Romantics placed significant emphasis on "witchcraft" or "magic" (Zauber), proposing monism and aesthetics as pathways to overcome the shortcomings of a mechanistic worldview; Meanwhile Bekker's anti-witchcraft stance, drawing upon Cartesian dualism, argues for the ineffectiveness of witchcraft in defense of faith. Both approaches left their own unresolved issues: German Romanticism's aesthetic solution remained accessible only to a small intellectual elite, failing to address society as a whole, while its anthropomorphic theology proved unrealistic. Bekker's anti-witchcraft position, on the other hand, encountered two formidable challenges: the relationship between magic and religion, and the universal history of human religion. Weber's writings during World War I synthesised insights from both sources, addressing their respective unresolved problems to complete a "closure" of critical inquiry. On one hand, he recognized the void of meaning in modern civilization, advocating for "vocation"(Beruf) to combat the existential weariness; on the other, he proposed a historical schema of religious development, where the "disenchantment of religion" spilling over into the "disenchantment of the world", which in turn created room for discussions of "re-enchantment" against the backdrop of the "clash of the gods".

The Program of Sociological Enlightenment in Social Systems Theory : An Examination Centered on Luhmann's 1967 Inaugural Lecture

Zhongxian ZHOU

2025, 45(5):  173-204. 

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Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory contains an implicit orientation toward a sociological enlightenment aimed at observing and describing functionally differentiated society through the theories and methods of sociology. This paper, taking Luhmann's 1967 Inaugural Lecture(Soziologische Aufklärung) as its guiding thread, systematically examines his program of sociological enlightenment. The importance of this manuscript lies in its establishment of the tone and direction for Luhmann's later development of social systems theory. It marks not only his declaration of a shift from empirical research to theoretical exploration but also provides a key to understanding his social systems theory. Firstly, the 1967 Inaugural Lecture outlines Luhmann's exploration of replacing subject-oriented rationality with system-oriented rationality in sociological enlightenment. It serves not only as a "manifesto" for social systems theory but also demonstrates Luhmann's ambition to construct a grand theory of society based on social systems. Secondly, to overcome the limitations of traditional functionalist systems theory, Luhmann transforms Parsons' structure-function system theory by employing a functional-structural system model. Epistemologically, this shift replaces the whole/part system paradigm with the system/environment paradigm, addressing the issue of societal complexity as a theoretical concern. Methodologically, it seeks to maximize the abstract potential of different system categories and extends system comparison to encompass as diverse a range of systems as possible. This paradigm seeks a new starting point for sociological self-understanding. Finally, the theoretical ambition of sociological enlightenment is not only a reflection on practical relevance but also a comprehensive theoretical reflection on social systems, which demands that social theory possesses the capacity for interdisciplinary connections and the ability to reflect on the theories of other functional areas in society. This provides an alternative perspective for understanding functionally differentiated societies and the positioning of sociological theory.

Knowledge Misalignment: Organizational-Professional Interactions in Cross-Level Integration of Healthcare

Yihan LIAN

2025, 45(5):  205-238. 

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The relationship between expertise and organizational structures has long been marked by both interdependence and tension, a dynamic particularly evident in technology collaboration between hospitals at different hierarchical tiers. Existing studies on healthcare resource integration have predominantly focused on institutional barriers while overlooking the complex mechanisms underlying the operation of knowledge. This paper, based on an organizational-professional interaction framework, presents a case study of a county-level hospital integrating into a "medical consortium" system and receiving technical support from a higher-level hospital. The study conceptualizes the knowledge practice dilemma triggered by institutional integration as "knowledge misalignment", wherein the relationships between hospitals, physicians, and medical technologies are reconstructed during consolidation, leading to inefficient knowledge operations in circulation, application, and interaction. This misalignment result in unintended consequences such as upward migration and concentration of patients and functional overlap, thereby deviating from the policy objectives of the "tiered healthcare delivery system". Specifically, in terms of knowledge flow, physicians are constrained by organizational boundaries and career development incentives, leading to the short-term and inefficient nature of cross-institutional practice; in knowledge application, the mismatch between advanced technologies and primary healthcare settings increases medical risks; and in knowledge interaction, the unequal relationship between senior and junior doctors reinforces the dominance of specialized expertise, further marginalizing primary care. These mechanisms reveal the deep-seated challenges in healthcare resource integration. This study expands the sociological perspective on cross-level healthcare integration and critically reflects on the institutional tensions in China's pursuit of healthcare equity: professional knowledge systems are not merely passive objects controlled by administrative power, but rather closely intertwined with organizational conditions, constituting an integral element within the hierarchical structure of healthcare.