Table of Content

20 May 2026, Volume 46 Issue 3

Previous Issue   

Governance Impossibility Triangle

Li-An ZHOU

2026, 46(3):  1-31. 

Asbtract ( 465 )   HTML ( 29)   PDF (3136KB) ( 461 )  

Figures and Tables | References | Related Articles | Metrics

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.

From Epistemic Authority to Action Permission: Translational Labor in Chinese Veterinary Practice

Siwei LU

2026, 46(3):  32-56. 

Asbtract ( 128 )   HTML ( 8)   PDF (2640KB) ( 103 )  

Figures and Tables | References | Related Articles | Metrics

The classical sociology of profession typically presupposes that a monopoly on professional knowledge automatically confers authority and naturally leads to public compliance. However, in today's increasingly complex emerging professional landscape, the "correctness" of epistemic rationality is often insufficient to directly translate into a "permission to act" needed to advance professional practice. When professional judgment encounters emotional resistance or value questioning, the static authoritative logic reveals its lack of explanatory power. In response to this theoretical dilemma, this paper takes Chinese pet healthcare industry as an empirical case study. The sector is profoundly shaped by the structural tension between "market force moving ahead and institutional frameworks lagging behind". Furthermore, the emotional economy has redefined pets as "quasi-family member, " significantly increasing the emotional engagement in veterinary interactions. In light of this dilemma, this paper introduces the analytical concept of "Translational Labor", arguing that professional practitioners must engage in continuous, two-way encoding of meaning in clinical practice. On the one hand, professional language is encoded into ethical values that align with the audience's framework through forward translation, thereby securing the legitimacy of action. On the other hand, through reverse translation, the overflowing emotional appeals are transformed into institutionalized contractual expressions, thereby defining the boundaries of risk. Based on qualitative field research, this paper further identifies three types of translation strategies in clinical interactions: cognitive translation, identity-based translation and emotional-ethical translation. The structural configuration of different organizational forms also profoundly shapes the preferences for these translation strategies. At the same time, faced with the inherent contradiction between forward and reverse translation, practitioners have developed a form of "strategic sincerity" that both fosters consensus and prevents themselves from suffering emotional fatigue. This paper argues that the battleground of modern professional jurisdiction is shifting from the simple monopoly of knowledge to the production of meaning and emotion.

Mobilization and Suppression: The Fragmented Appropriation of Labor Subjectivity in China's Game Industry

Zhutao PAN, Tongyu WU

2026, 46(3):  57-82. 

Asbtract ( 126 )   HTML ( 4)   PDF (2602KB) ( 130 )  

Figures and Tables | References | Related Articles | Metrics

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.

The Quest for the Zeitgeist in Sociology: A Case Study of the Young Marx's Research on the Greek Intellectual History

Weizhuo ZHANG

2026, 46(3):  83-112. 

Asbtract ( 109 )   HTML ( 3)   PDF (3373KB) ( 91 )  

References | Related Articles | Metrics

Before the young Marx inverted the order of state and civil society in Hegel's philosophy of law and embarked on a scientific analysis of the inner mechanisms of society, he had already transcended the Hegelian and post-Hegelian narrative of spiritual history and undertaken a substantial clarification of the meaning of the Zeitgeist. Marx keenly observed that the Hegelian conception of spiritual history, which connected classical antiquity with modernity through Stoicism and subsequently through the idealism of Christianity, both produced and reflected a spiritual condition in which reason in modern society had become highly developed, while will, or vital power, had become extremely enfeebled. In contrast, by creatively reviving the figure and thought of Epicurus within the Western spiritual tradition, Marx established the spiritual character of his later materialist sociology. Unlike any previous form of materialism, the embryonic materialist thought developed by the young Marx signified an attitude of confronting oneself realistically and sincerely. He broke through all imaginative and theoretical illusions, reflected upon his own subjective state, and simultaneously took a firm hold of himself, thereby cultivating, in social action, a spiritual disposition to face and resist the oppressive conditions of social existence. This was articulated by the young Marx through the historical-philosophical metaphor of the opposition between Roman character and Jewishness. This offers important insights for contemporary Chinese sociology: not only is the pursuit of the Zeitgeist a prerequisite for sociological research, but exploring the profound implications of the spirit of the age for transformative change is also closely connected to comprehending the origins of civilization.

Reconstructing Confucianism and Literati Religious Groups: A Study of the Religious Practices of Lower-Ranking Scholar-Gentry in Wenzhou during the Late Qing

Zhe ZHANG, Jundan HOU

2026, 46(3):  113-150. 

Asbtract ( 140 )   HTML ( 3)   PDF (4797KB) ( 92 )  

Figures and Tables | References | Related Articles | Metrics

In the second half of the nineteenth century, confronted with the dual crises of religious turmoil within traditional society and the impact of Christianity, the Chinese literati widely engaged in attempts to rebuild society and rectify public morality through religious means. This paper takes the late-Qing "Sun Religion" (Taiyang Jiao) in Wenzhou as a case study to examine the specific forms and historical significance of this intellectual and activist trend.Research reveals that, following the Tongzhi and Guangxu reigns, the local literati hierarchy in Wenzhou collapsed amid the decline of the examination system, the rise of minor lineages, and the spread of extravagant commercial customs. Lower-stratum literati such as Jin Hui and Liu Shaokuan, drawing upon Yan-Li teachings, Buddhist and Daoist ideas and modern theories of electricity, organized the "Sun Religion" as a literati religious group. Their aim was to re-examine the proper role of the literati and to offer a practical path for popular moral enlightenment. On the one hand, the group maintained an ascetic lifestyle by cultivating themselves through daily practices and returning to ancient rites, disciplining their body and mind while striving to preserve moral autonomy amidst everyday social interactions and the corrupting influence of prevailing customs. On the other hand, the doctrines of the "Sun Religion" expounded a "moral-physical law" that linked all sentient beings with the cosmos. This law regarded the mutual attraction and repulsion of yin and yang electricity as the origin of all phenomena, affirmed the power of individual perceptual consciousness and moral transcendence, and thereby established a spiritual bond of shared suffering and unity with all things.This religious yearning to elevate the inner will to infinite heights forged a universal personality that embodied both religious transcendence and modern gezhi (scientific) inquiry. Although it stood in tension with local social sentiments, it served as the spiritual wellspring for the "hequn lihui" (uniting groups and establishing associations) political organizations of the first half of the twentieth century, foreshadowing the radical ethos of lower-stratum intellectuals who sought to transform society through voluntarism. The paper further argues that this practice builds upon the tradition of the religionization of Confucianism in the late-Ming and the formation of the literati-religious societies in the mid-Qing period. Within the broader intellectual currents and regional social structures, this study reveals the intrinsic roots of modern Chinese intellectuals' personality and spiritual state: rejecting the "reality" of the material world before their eyes, they turned instead to an abstract spiritual community as their foundation, thereby embarking on a radical path from self-cultivation to the pursuit of sainthood of social transformation.

A Typology of Fatherhood: Practice Forms and Motivational Structures in Fathers' Sport-Based Childrearing

Rong HU, Yuchen AI

2026, 46(3):  151-179. 

Asbtract ( 152 )   HTML ( 6)   PDF (3323KB) ( 114 )  

Figures and Tables | References | Related Articles | Metrics

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.

Collecting Disasters: The Materiality of Memory and the Totem of Cultural Trauma

Ruitong LI

2026, 46(3):  180-208. 

Asbtract ( 124 )   HTML ( 7)   PDF (2955KB) ( 91 )  

Figures and Tables | References | Related Articles | Metrics

Studies on disaster memory has largely focused on narrative construction, often at the expense of the experiential reality of disaster itself. As memory becomes increasingly mediated through discourse, its material grounding is obscured, leading to processes of erosion and attenuation. In response, this study advances an analytical perspective that re-centers the materiality of meaning, seeking to bring the tangible foundations of memory back. This study examines a private museum dedicated to commemorating the Wenchuan earthquake, focusing on how its practices transform local, mundane objects into carriers of national and collective remembrance. Drawing on the Strong Program in cultural sociology, particularly the "icon theory", the analysis develops an "authentic and aesthetic" framework to investigate how disaster artifacts acquire iconic power through the interplay between their material appearances and their deeper meanings. The findings show that by directly incorporating everyday objects from disaster-stricken areas into their exhibitions, museums, on the one hand, restore the symbolic meanings of disaster memory to the complexity and reality of everyday life. On the other hand, the destruction and trauma captured in material form give rise to aesthetic experiences imbued with moral significance. In this way, exhibited objects preserve the experiential texture of disaster while becoming materially grounded "totems" that crystallize collective consciousness. More broadly, this study argues that the durability of collective memory depends on material forms capable of directly embodying moral sentiments, rather than on fluid discursive narratives alone. By foregrounding materiality, it shows how local commemorative practices supplement dominant narrative frameworks through irreducible material experience, thereby sustaining collective disaster memory.

Intergenerational Poverty Reduction Effects of Social Security Policies: A Longitudinal Study Based on the China Health and Nutrition Survey

Chao ZHONG, Haomiao ZHANG

2026, 46(3):  209-239. 

Asbtract ( 118 )   HTML ( 3)   PDF (2850KB) ( 102 )  

Figures and Tables | References | Related Articles | Metrics

The reform of China's state-owned enterprises during the 1990s resulted in large numbers of workers being laid off, giving rise to a phenomenon of "new urban poverty" primarily affecting laid-off workers and their families. In response, the Chinese government immediately moved to vigorously expand the urban social security system. Existing studies have mainly focused on the poverty reduction effects of social security policies on the generation of laid-off workers (the parent generation), while paying insufficient attention to their impact on the growth and developmental outcomes of the offspring generation, particularly with regard to the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Against this backdrop, this study uses data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey(1989-2015) to examine the intergenerational poverty reduction effects of social security policies on laid-off families. The findings indicate that pension insurance policies within the social security system do not exhibit significant intergenerational poverty reduction effects. In contrast, medical insurance, as well as cash transfer programs such as social assistance and social welfare, can enhance the intergenerational investment capacity of impoverished laid-off families. Specifically, these policies mitigate the intergenerational transmission of poverty by exerting a buffering effect through pathways of investment in family upbringing and a developmental effect through pathways of school education investment. Furthermore, the effectiveness of such interventions is moderated by parental cultural capital. That is, the policy effects of social security policies in promoting intergenerational investment are more pronounced in families with higher levels of parental cultural capital. In addition, the impact of social security policies on the intergenerational transmission of poverty among laid-off families varies. The intergenerational poverty reduction effects are more evident among families where the mother was laid off, those laid off before 2004, and those in central China. Accordingly, future research and policy practice should pay closer attention to the interaction between policy interventions and family dynamics, with an emphasis on stimulating the internal motivation of impoverished families, thereby better leveraging the intergenerational poverty reduction effects of external policy interventions.