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Table of Content

    20 September 2009, Volume 29 Issue 5
    Articles
    The Reverse Order in Paying off Workers by Contractors in the Chinese Construction Industry:For Whom Is the Market Risk Reduced by “Guanxi”?
    CAI He, JIA Wen-Juan
    2009, 29(5):  1-20. 
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     In the construction industry, when a project is short of funds to pay off all the workers, the contractors will follow a reverse order, namely, paying off the peripheral workers to whom they are not personally close before paying off the core workers with whom they have close relationships. Such a pattern is due to “Guanxi’s” inability to reduce “the environmental uncertainty” despite of the possibility for “Guanxi” to lower the uncertainty in the trading parties. Once the environmental uncertainty directly threatens the interests of the parties in a “Guanxi,” the inherent tension within the “Guanxi” will intensify and conflicts will surface. Contractors would rather take the risk of the behavioral uncertainty of losing their core workers in order to minimize the probable threat from the peripheral workers. Nevertheless, when the contractors combine their hiring power with the law of relational favorism, the result is a kind of “Guanxi hegemony” which can restrict the core workers’ behavioral uncertainty. “Guanxi’s” function in regulating market risks to unequal levels for the contractors and the core workers, with the former benefited from reduced risks but the latter to shoulder higher risks.

    The Social Basis of Technology Application:A Comparative Study on the Application of the Steam Filature Assembling in Modern China
    ZHANG Mao-Yuan
    2009, 29(5):  21-38. 
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    In modern China, the application of the steam filature assembling in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta has brought about the specialization in the silk profession of mulberry cultivating, silkworm growing, and filaturefarmers being transformed to workers. The study discovered that, in the Yangtze River Delta, the specialization happened between cities and villages, resulting in interestconflicting structural changes. In the new social structure, the traditional silk areas provided silk cocoons only; thus, the profits of the farmers and the gentries were hurt and their resistance to the application of the steam filature assembling arose. In the Pearl River Delta, the specialization took place in families and villages. The farmers and gentries benefited from the application of the new technology; hence a strong support for it. Therefore, in the Pearl River Delta, the new social structure resulting from the application of the steam filature assembling was an interestsharing one, which in turn accelerated further application of this new technology.

    Town Government’s Power Operations between the Pressure Hierarchical/Bureaucratic System and the Rural Society:A Case Study of Ju Town
    OU-YANG Jing
    2009, 29(5):  39-63. 
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    The paradox of township power is in its formal bureaucratic institutional structure but its practical informal operation, which is seen not only in its tactics and strategies but also in its own structural transformation. This paper takes Ju Town as a case and presents the town government’s actual informal operation and its inherent operational logic by describing the town government’s administrative functions and its structure, and the operations of the financial and administrative constituents. This study has discovered that the town government’s informal operation originates in a unique hierarchical context, namely, it is under the pressure bureaucracy and above the nonformalized rural society. This status has embodied the town government in three kinds of relationships: the pressure system and the hierarchical bureaucratic system; pressure duties and resource scarcity; and the formalized bureaucratic organization and nonformalized rural society. The existence of these three relationships enforces the town government to find an approach for survival in the context where the pressure system, bureaucracy system and rural society are interlocked. This has finally shaped the logic and characteristic of the town government’s operation.

    Toward a Social Practice Theory of Market: A Further Diversion
    WANG He-Jian
    2009, 29(5):  64-87. 
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    The social structural theory of market, as a mainstream sociological market theory, has been a big challenge to the neoclassical equilibrium theory of market. However, the “hierarchical inclusion” assumption in the methodology of structuralism has significantly limited its theoretical development. The new institutionalistic theory of market, as an introspective sociological theory, tries to develop an analysis of the interaction between the institutions and the structures on a concept of expanded hierarchical inclusion; but it fails to apply this idea to the research on market construction and operation. Finally, although with some concepts to compensate for the socialstructure analysis included, the social constructionistic theory of economic institutions contains some internal conflicts of the conceptions in methodology, which inevitably limits the extent of its remediation and correction. The paper concludes that contemporary market sociology should be amended or diverted towards a direction of establishing a social practice theory based on a special action theory, namely, the logic of selfaction.

    Economic Transition, School Expansion, and Educational Inequality in China, 1990-2000
    WU Xiao-Gang
    2009, 29(5):  88-113. 
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    This paper examines the trend in the educational stratification during China’s economic reforms in the 1990s. Based on the sample data of population censuses in 1990 and 2000, the schoolage children were matched to their parents’ background information within the same households and the effects of family background on children’s school enrollment and continued education were investigated. The results showed that, despite the substantial expansion of educational opportunities in the decade, family backgrounds continued to play an important role in determining school enrollment status and continued education. Over the decade, children of rural hukou status became even more disadvantaged compared with their urban counterparts and the effect of father’s socioeconomic status on school enrollment was further increased. Despite the fact that children of rural hukou status had gained relatively more opportunities at junior high school level as a result of the nationwide push for 9year compulsory education, the ruralurban gap in the likelihood of transition to senior high school level had been enlarged and the effect of father’s socioeconomic status had increased, even after controlling for the regional variations in economic development.

    The Impact of College Bachelors’ Class Background on Their Occupational Status AttainmentMarket Transformation and Segmented Class Reproduction
    LI Li-Ming, LI Wei-Dong
    2009, 29(5):  114-131. 
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    Using the 2007 survey data of the “college bachelors’ class background and their occupational status attainment,” this study analyzed the impact of the former variable on the latter in order to discover the relative class structure during the market transition. It was found that the coevolution of the politics and the market paralleled the process of competitive differentiation and sharing between the old and the new interest groups, the process of rejecting the college bachelors coming from families in the manuallabor stratum, and the converging process of the politics and the market that ensures the continuous monopoly of the elite class and the successive intergenerational dualistic segmentation.

    Risk and Anticipation: The Effect of Social Security on the Chinese Residents’ Consumption and Savings
    WANG Yi
    2009, 29(5):  132-148. 
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     At present, the economy has been on a speedy rise in China, but the Chinese residents’ savings have continued to climb even the total demand is not sufficient. The low internal demand resulting from high savings but low consumption has become an important factor that restricts China’s economy from developing rapidly and operating positively. The unsteady social security system is the major reason for the people’s caution on spending. This paper mainly analyzes how the social security level and social security system in China affect the residents’ savings and discusses the key to accelerating the national internal demand, stimulating people’s consumption, and improving the Chinese citizens’ benefits from the perspective of social security.

    Living Arrangements of the Elderly and Children’s Caregiving Behaviors
    XIE Gui-Hua
    2009, 29(5):  149-167. 
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    Using data from the 2006 General Social Survey, this paper analyzes how elders’ residential arrangements, living distances from children and the number of children influence the children’s caregiving behaviors. The study finds that, although the residential arrangements of the elders and living distances from their children do not affect significantly the economic support given by the children, they affect the daily care and emotional support from the children. The parents coresiding with their children receive care and emotional support more frequently on a daily basis than those living independently. The shorter the living distance, the more daily care and emotional support given by the children. The study also shows that, the frequency of a child’s caregiving is not affected by the number of siblings s/he has. Single children do not care for their parents more frequently than nonsingle children.

    Failure of the Traditional Childcare Model and the Causes of Street Children: An Ethnographic Study of the Street Children in the Shanghai Railway Station Neighborhood
    CHENG Fu-Cai
    2009, 29(5):  168-186. 
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    The phenomenon of street children is universal. The ethnographic study of 49 street children in the Shanghai Railway Station neighborhood has discovered the major factors for the problem of street children: family dysfunction, ruraltourban migration, and children’s pursuit for their autonomy. These issues were a result of the macro social transformation in current China and had caused a rupture between the culturally determined normative childcare model and the real life conditions of many children, which has forced many of them to run away for alternative life opportunities.

    Spatial Point Pattern Analysis and Social Investigation
    SHI Pei-Jian
    2009, 29(5):  187-205. 
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    The factor of space has long been neglected in sociological research. There are many reasons for that. One possible reason is lack of suitable methods of studying social problems from a spatial analysis viewpoint. Fortunately, the methods of spatial point pattern analysis are gradually getting mature in the environmental epidemiology with the excellent work of many statisticians. We contend that employing these methods to study social problems is exceedingly valuable because a lot of sociological objects have the spatial characteristic on a large scale. This paper is to introduce the sociologists to some of the classical methods in spatial point pattern analysis.