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Table of Content

    20 September 2010, Volume 30 Issue 5
    Articles

    Charisma,Publicity, and China Society: Rethinking of “Chaxu Geju”
    Zhang Jianghua
    2010, 30(5):  1-24. 
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     The discussion in the current research concerning Fei Xiaotong’s notion of Chaxu Geju concerns the differences in the relationships between the individuals and the other social members in various categories. But the author thinks the same pattern can be found in any culture, there must be some deviations if we discuss it just from this angle. Fei Xiaotong insisted that there were two kinds of social collectivity, the group, formed out of Tuanti Geju; and the social circle Shehui Quanzi, formed out of Chaxu Geju. The social structural difference between the East and the West is not that the West has groups only and that the East has Shehui Quanzi only. Instead, the difference lies in the function of Chaxu Geju: In China, it is the social organizations resulting from Chaxu Gejuthat have occupied the dominant and guiding positions. The public sphere in China is actually an extension and transformation from the private sphere, or, at least, is dominated by the private sphere. that Consequently, offering publicity in Chinese society, to a considerable extent, is dependent upon the morality of one or several individuals at the center of the configuration of distinctions.

    Analyzing the Embeddedness of Power:Business Alliance under the Reorganization of StateOwned Assets
    Zhang Chenjian
    2010, 30(5):  25-44. 
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    This paper presents an explanatory framework for investigating the power relationships among business actors and their strategic interactions, as well as their embedded social networks and institutional settings. Grounded on the “power” analysis from the French School of Organizational Sociology (FSoS), this paper provides an indepth analysis of the business alliance between a stateowned asset operating organization and a privateenterprise group, which was undertaken in the reorganization of stateowned assets in China. With the concept of “embeddedness,” the author contends that, power, as an indispensable prerequisite for any business alliance, is embedded in social networks, and more broadly, in the institutional environment of the marketoriented reform and regime continuity in China, which in turn brings uncertainty to power and alliance. This paper contributes at the theoretical level by bringing the “power” analysis back into the business alliance literature, integrating Granovetter’s network embeddedness and Nee’s institutional embeddedness, and proposing to have close attention paid to social networks and broader institutional surroundings within which the business actors are embedded and being influenced.
    A Study on the Autonomy of Business Associations: ProvinceLevel Business Associations in Guangdong
    2010, 30(5):  75-95. 
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    Focusing on the provincelevel business associations in Guangdong, this study assessed the associations’ autonomy and summarized the theories of organizational autonomy and its influencing factors. The study did an empirical analysis of the influences of two variables on the autonomy of these associations: associationstate relational strength and organizational size. The first variable was found to be negatively correlated with associations’ total autonomy, tangible human resources and finance, and cognitive autonomy, but not with activity autonomy. There was no correlation between organizational size and total or specific autonomy.

    Based Game: A New Explanatory Framework for RightSafeguarding Action in Grassroots Society
    Dong Haijun
    2010, 30(5):  96-120. 
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    The research on rightsafeguarding actions in grassroots society has kept the dialog ongoing, but it needs a comprehensive explanatory framework to rid the current explanations of their tension. Borrowing the meaning of Shi in a native resource concept and nurtured by the sound core explanatory ideas, the author used a real life township case to suggest an integrated explanatory framework—a Shibased Game with four aspects of perceiving  Shi , creating Shi, lending or borrowing Shi, and applying  Shi , which are in the same rightsafeguarding action system together with the gameobject`s response by Shi and the mediator’s MiddleWay Shi . This framework displays the rightsafeguarding actor’s plurality, the game`s equality, tactics’ expediency, factors’ diversity, and contents’ richness. It reflects the transitional tendency in the Chinese grassroots society, expands the rightsafeguarding perspective in the grassroots, and exhibits a process from the form of safeguarding rights of the government vs. the civil or the powerful vs. the weak to a game involving multiple interest groups. Thus, this framework possesses a better integrative explanatory power at a higher level.


    SelfOrganizing and Law Abiding: Workers’ Collective Action Strategies to Defend Rights: A Case Study of Enterprise SNS in Shanghai
    Wu Tong;Wen Jun,
    2010, 30(5):  121-141. 
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    In the Chinese institutional context, workers must weigh economic costs and political risks when fighting for their legal rights; thus, they have to come up with some “safe”, “effective”, and “sustainable” protesting means. This paper analyzes two rightdefending events by the workers in a manufacturing enterprise in Shanghai. The workers’ “selforganizing” and “law abiding” strategies not only provided them with organizational protection but also the legitimacy of action. The paper concludes with a discussion of this kind of protest strategies with the background of macrolevel social transition in China.

    Family and Market: Nonagricultural Employment in Rural China
    Author1: Song Jing; Author2: John Logan
    2010, 30(5):  142-163. 
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    This study used the 2005 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) to investigate nonagricultural employment in rural China. With China moving away from collective agriculture, rural households have begun to act as the basic unit of production, which has allowed some peasants to leave their family farms and join the paid labor force or participate in the flourishing private businesses. The first model applied logistic regression at the individual level to estimate the employment probabilities in agricultural versus nonagricultural sectors by married men versus married women. The second model was conducted at the couple level to estimate the likelihood of four nonagricultural employment outcomes: both spouses, neither spouses, husband, or wife. Both models confirmed positive correlations between education and nonagricultural employment. Women’s employment was more responsive to the presence of grandparents and young children in the household, with the former effect interacting with grandparents’ ages. The male employment privilege did not significantly affect the gender division in career within the family. The results also indicated that the employment pattern within the family was closely related to market factors such as the geographical location of the village, the economic developmental features, and the conditions of the labor force. In addition, better nonagricultural employment opportunities existed in the Eastern and Central regions than in the Western regions.

    Urban Housing Stratification: An Analysis Based on CGSS2006 Data
    Liu Zuyun;Hu Rong
    2010, 30(5):  164-192. 
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    The housing situation provides a penetrating view of the issues of social polarization and stratification. This study uses the 2006 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS2006) data and latent class modeling to describe and analyze the current situation of social stratification of urban Chinese housing resources across three dimensions: housing conditions, property rights, and housing location. The findings show that, in the midst of institutional changes, possession of housing resources and selection of house locations still bear the imprint of social stratification despite complex and multiple housing distribution patterns. This stratification occurs not only among different social classes but also across generations.

    Revision and Development of the Stereotype Content Model: Research Findings Based on CollegeStudent Samples
    Gao Minghua
    2010, 30(5):  193-216. 
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    Stereotypes are fixed or generalized beliefs about social groups and their members. The dimensions in stereotype formation studied so far have been systematically summarized into the Stereotype Content Model or SCM. The theory of SCM is briefly introduced in the paper. Following the standard procedure of SCM, the author used a questionnaire to ask 115 college students in her pilot study and 160 college students in her formal study to classify 21 social groups and provide comments on them. The stereotype categories of the 21 social groups perceived by college students were established. A theoretical discussion was then provided. Going beyond the factfinding limitations of the traditional SCM, this paper has tried to explain the psychological mechanisms underlying the stereotypes of specific social groups.

    From Collective Memory to Individual Memory: A Critical Reflection on the Social Memory Studies
    Liu Yaqiu
    2010, 30(5):  217-242. 
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    From Halbwachs’s collective memory paradigm, this paper mainly reflects upon the power approach and social determinism in the field of collective memory, with a focus on the role of individual memory. Here we encounter memory glimmer, which mainly exists in individual memory, but sometimes it appears between individual memory and collective memory. Generally, it is a result of collision between the determined society theory and active individuals. Compared with the strong social memory paradigm, memory glimmer is too weak to be a separate memory category, but it describes one alternative of the social memory and implies another reality which has been overlooked.