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Table of Content

    20 January 2012, Volume 32 Issue 1
    Articles

    The Problems of Fiscal Earmarked Funds: On “Governing the State through Programs”
    Zhou Feizhou
    2012, 32(1):  1-37. 
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    Since the TaxSharing Reform in 1994, more and more fiscal funds have been transferred down to local governments in the form of “earmarked” or “program” funds. These funds are downward flowing in a very complicated multilevel governmental system. The first part of this paper provides an overview of the structural channels of the earmarked transfers with tables and graphics. In the second part, the paper reports a case in the education sector to illustrate the management and use of such funds. On the grassroot governmental levels, especially in counties and townships, the countylevel education bureaus transfer many earmarked educational funds directly to rural schools, rather than to township governments. The townships, which used to be the direct fundmanager of the rural schools, are no longer needed in the new management system. The author labels this new fund flowing channel as the “7”shaped pattern and the old one as the “L” pattern. The case analysis of the efficiency in utilizing the educational funds in the two patterns, especially the fund for routine operational costs of the schools, has found that the new pattern has led to more and more funds being “specialized” as earmarked funds including those for routine operational costs. Furthermore, in the new system, most funds are required to be managed as earmarked funds, therefore, it is mandatory for schools to submit fundapplication proposals and fund expenditure reports to their county education bureau, the process of which has lowered efficiency. The new “7”shaped fund transfer channel is not able to handle local emergencies efficiently because if a school faces an emergency, such as a wall clashed in a rainstorm, has to write a proposal to apply for a fund from the county bureau, but the county leaders still mandate the county bureau to solve the problem together with the township government while the latter is now kept out of the loop of the new fundtransfer system. The last part of the paper discusses the unexpected consequences of the new system of the earmarked funds and concludes that specializing funds as earmarked ones could have been leading to lowered efficiency rather than the opposite.

    Power Game and Industrial Institutional Change: An Empirical Study on the Strategic Shift in the International Cooperation by the Chinese Oil Industry (1988-2008)
    Liang Bo
    2012, 32(1):  38-67. 
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    From 1988 to 2008, the international cooperation of the Chinese oil industry underwent an important strategic shift from the initial ”importing” (yin jing lai) of foreign capitals and technology to the “exporting” (zou chu qu) of capitals and technology after 1998. The core issue of this study was to reflect upon this significant shift and answer questions at the theoretical level. There exist two competing theories in this regardthe theoretical explanation that emphasizes the importance of nation‘’s rational industrial policies from the perspective of new institutionalism in economic sociology, and the theoretical explanation that emphasizes market functions from neoclassic economics of industries. The current study attempted to get beyond of the inclination of a priorirationality or structural determinism in the existing research by introducing the paradigm of strategic analysis of French organizational sociology in order to describe and analyze the hidden micropolitical process during the industrial institutional change. The analysis was on four dimensions of actors’ differentiated targets, games’ organizational environments, actors’ action competencies and control of key resources, and actors’ action strategies. It was found that, as a phenomenon in an industrial institutional transformation, the strategic shift in the international cooperation by the Chinese oil industry was not only under the significant influences of the state, its industrial policies, and the market mechanism, but it was also, even to a greater extent, at the function of the dynamics of complex power relationships and the mechanisms in the power games. That means that the deeplyseated driving force for this strategic shift mainly came from a special power game between the central government (the state) and the stateowned oil companies in terms of their respective action ability and resource control as well as their respective balancing and judging of specific organizational environments in interaction and the other parties’ probable action strategies.

    The Path to the Banality of Evil
    Feng Ting
    2012, 32(1):  68-87. 
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    Via the concept of the banality of evil, Hannah Arendt revealed a new type of evil in modern society, which is entirely different from Kant’s ”radical evil.” This paper examines and analyzes three facets to uncover the path as how and why banality combines with evil in modern society. First, the gardening stance of modern countries, originated from the project of modernity, divides the whole populace into plants of utility that are in accordance with the requirements of rationally designed society, that is, garden of rational design, or weeds that do not meet such requirements and need to be removed. This has provided legitimacy to such acts of violence or evil as genocide. Secondly, out of the need of the operation of itself, the machine of modern politics has tamed the bureaucratic officers therein, removed their independent conscience of morality and will, and made them each pure gears of the machine such that “the banality of thoughtlessness” has become the indispensible element or constituent in the operation of modern politics. Thirdly, along with the fall of politics that is independent and coherent with its rationality and meaningfulness, politics has degraded into instrumental politics, which has led to the disappearance of its closely related public sphere. Consequently, political issues become technical or administrative issues that require no need for public debates, thus, an independent, critical public has morphed into a mass under manipulation; hence, collapse yet another barrier against the fire of the banality of evil on its way. On this basis, this article concludes that banality has been propelled toward evil by structural and institutional factors in the development of modern society and political operations. This is not to exculpate Eichmann, nor to incriminate each and every individual, but to evoke reflection on the responsibility that each individual must bear as a citizen when facing evils such as massacres so as to establish premises for introspection of politics. To equal the probe into causes of a crime to the attribution of the crime is unfair; to replace the probe into causes of a crime with attribution of the crime is dangerous.

    Power and Fashion Reproduction:A Review of Bourdieu’s Cultural Consumption Theory
    Zhu Weijue
    2012, 32(1):  88-103. 
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     This paper discusses in great detail from the perspective of power and power relations about the fashion reproduction theory—one of the cores in Bourdieu’s cultural consumption theory. The fashion reproduction theory is based on Bourdieu’s political science concerning symbolic power. The political science of symbolic power insists that we combine the power struggle with the social field structure and its operational mechanism when we think holistically. Bourdieu argues that modern society is highly differentiated, consisting of a large number of fields full of power struggles. Fields adjust, evolve, or reconstruct in response to the changes in the power balance between classes. Bourdieu’s fashion reproduction theory is based on the following two claims: 1, Fashion is the result of the common "collaboration" between the two independent fields: the production field and the consumption field; 2, Power relations exist throughout every aspect of fashion reproduction. Clearly, Bourdieu’s theory of fashion reproduction is consistent with his position over the past years. In his view, whether the production field or the consumption field, each is a battlefield where all participants will engage in fierce competition for legitimacy and distinction. The field of fashion production, with its relative autonomy, is not a place for power struggle to be explicitly expressed as interclass antagonism but to function in an implicit way. In this, the competition usually occurs between the dominating senior designers and the dominated cuttingedge designers. The two camps produce fashion through distinguishing traditional from modern, highpriced tags from lowpriced tags, conventional from avantgarde, etc. But it must be noted that the autonomy of the fashion production field is a relative term; it is inevitably influenced by the power field. Likewise, the power relations in the production field are rooted in the social hierarchy. Fashion producers participate in a roundabout way to legitimize and to engage in the struggle for reproduction. On the other hand, the consumption field refers to the class field or the dominant class field. Here, consumers take part in an endless struggle of classification (class struggle). Power relations directly reflect class relations. And only the dominant class has the right to participate in the reproduction of fashion and vogue. The middle and lower classes are not able to join in such a distinctive game; they are present at most only as a contrast. Fashion, as an expression of the legitimate taste of the ruling class, has been widely used as the implementation of symbolic violence over the lower classes. Bourdieu’s cultural consumption theory provides us with a unique perspective to comprehensively understand the consuming phenomenon and its characteristics in the era with the richpoor divide.

    Tied CheckandBalance: Operational Mechanism of Grassroots Organizations’ Power
    Chen Feng
    2012, 32(1):  104-125. 
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     The nature of the grassroots politics and the logic of rural governance are the keys to the understanding of the formation and change of the current rural order, but they also help to understand China’s unique mode of state governance. This paper explores the internal mechanism in the informal or semiformal practice of grassroots governance and its social and value bases. The study has found that the positions of village organizations in the state power system constitute part of the external conditions and pressure of the rural governance, but the power of these village organizations in their practice of general and semiformal governance is rooted in rural society itself. Village cadres govern the villagers mainly through bonds tied with interests and emotions to fulfill their governance goal; the villagers, on the other hand, try to balance the village cadres’ control through bonds tied with their various obligation and rights, especially in the form of jointresponsibilities. It is this twoway relationship between cadres and villagers in the governance that has established the overall balance between rights and obligations, and that has shaped the current rural social order, that is, "tied checkandbalance." The atomization of the social structure, the differentiation of the economic structure, and the diversification of the value system in current rural society are the social basis of grassroots governance. It is difficult for the grassroots organizations to accomplish their governance goal by relying solely on the informal system of Confucian society or public rules of modern society; what is needed is to effectively combine and balance the two. Unlike the rightobligation view with legally based rationales developed in Western civil society, Chinese farmers’ bondbased view of rights and obligations is the value basis for the grassroots organizations to put their governing power into operation. It is this combined support of both social and value foundations in rural China that has made it possible for this “tied checkandbalance" to have become the core mechanism for grassroots organizations to routinely operate their governing power.

    Housing Inequality during the Market Transition: Evidence from the Data of CGSS2006
    Hu Rong
    2012, 32(1):  126-152. 
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    As an important part of the economic system reform, the housing reform in China has been going on for more than 30 years, which has led to gradual commercialization and marketization of housing distribution. The analysis using Hierarchical Linear Modeling on the data of CGSS2006 has revealed the degrees of housing inequality and the impact of the housing distribution mechanism with the background of regional disparity. Firstly, at the regional level, market transformation improved the overall housing conditions for the urban residents. The higher the regional market level, the more housing resources the urban/town residents possessed. Despite of that, there was a clear differentiation between house owners and renters concerning the positive effect of the market transition, that is, renters did not significantly benefit from the process of market transition. Meanwhile, market transition enhanced the regional housing inequality in a given period of time. An inverted Ushaped relationship between regional market level and the regional housing inequality indicated that the gap in the ownership of housing resources first expanded with the progress of the regional marketization, and shrank only at a later time. Secondly, some danwei(work unit) related factors such as its features, rank, or size no longer affected the distribution of housing resources; the housing differences between the workers who were within and those who were outside the stateowned working system no longer reached the statistical significance level. However, at the individual level, the cadre identity sustained its persistent impact on housing distribution; the political elite with the redistribution power still enjoyed an obvious advantage in obtaining houses. The findings revealed a dual stratification system in housing distribution during the current market transition and this system played a role in doubling the size of the housing inequality.

    The Impact of Relative Conjugal Resources and Emotional Relationships on Marital Violence in RuralUrban Migrants’ Families: From a Gender Perspective
    Li Chenghua | Jin Xiaoyi
    2012, 32(1):  153-173. 
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    With rapid urbanization in China, the changes in the economic power structure and emotional relationships between the married couples of ruralurban migrants will affect the risk of marital violence. This article takes the gender perspective and puts forward an integrated analysis framework to examine quantitatively the impact of relative conjugal resources and emotional relationships on marital violence (physical violence and cold violence) and gender differences. The results show that marital violence is common in ruralurban migrants’ families, with cold violence being its main pattern and women perpetrating marital violence more than men. Both relative conjugal resources and emotional relationships have significant effects on marital violence, with the first variable affecting men more than women and the second variable affecting women more than men.

    Chinese Farmers’ Environmental Justice and Action Approach: A Case Study on Environmental Complaint in Xiaoxi Village
    Liu Chunyan
    2012, 32(1):  174-196. 
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     It is important to do some close examinations of environmental justice in local. Such pluralistic notions of environmental justice beyond the mainstream meaning of west countries, and will be the premises of global environmental governance. This paper provides a case study on environmental complaint in china, shows the local meaning of environmental justice. Few owners of the tungsten mine factory make a great profit by monopoly and free utilizing common resources, but leave serious ecological disaster in the local with zero cost on environment use. The phenomenon of ‘individual gain but collective pay’ is the character in China today, which is also the root leading to villagers’ unjust feelings and complaints. Environmental justice in China is different from its western definition, it is not ‘fair shares’ of the environmental benefits and harms, and not in formal structures of environmental government and policy, but collective responsibility of government and enterprises which get great benefits from the common environment freely.

    Resources of Legitimacy and Chinese Workers’ Activism: Restudying Shanghai Workers’ Strike in 1957
    Lin Chaochao
    2012, 32(1):  197-219. 
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    In the mid1950s, a strike wave rolled across the city of Shanghai on an unprecedented scale. Elizabeth J. Perry wrote an article on it to stress the positive correlation of intraworkingclass divisions with labor activism. While recognizing the fragmentation among the workers, this paper furthers the investigation to the area of mobilization mechanism of Chinese workers' activism, emphasizing the importance of the institutional environment of the state to the study of the demands and expressions of Chinese workers' protests in contemporary China. With China’s actual conditions taken into consideration, the resource mobilization theory and the political process model are adopted to reexamine Shanghai's strike wave of 1957 with a focus on the interaction between the participants, resources, mobilization networks and the institutional environment of the state. The author holds that the Chinese workers in the 1950s were gradually forming the farreaching tradition of activism that was characterized of the actors’ dependency upon and attainment of the external resources of legitimacy (including the ideology of the state, top leaders' statements, official opinions, etc.). These external resources of legitimacy, as well as the elite, identification, and networks, are the elements of the mobilization mechanism of activism. However, the Chinese workers’ activism since the 1950s has been unsuccessful to obtain legitimate support for its action in the absence of the aforementioned external resources of legitimacy, resulting in the ineffectiveness of the action by the minority elite in mobilization on a large scale.

    A Sociological Analysis of Zhaojia
    Hu Liang
    2012, 32(1):  220-242. 
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    Asking for additional money after the initial closure of a deal (Zhaojia) was a special economic behavior in rural land transactions. It was a broadly practiced economic phenomenon in the Ming and Qing Dynasties in China, that is, after the initial closure of a deal, the seller still had the right to ask for additional money from the buyer. Plattner’s theory is used here as a frame to divide impersonal and personal exchanges to explain this phenomenon from the sociological perspective. I contend that Zhaojia belonged to the kind of personal exchanges and it was made possible when built upon stable social relationships. In this study, I first examined the social background of this economic behavior and discovered that most land transactions took place in villages where the seller and the buyer were often familiar with each other, and that both sides had other social relationships than the relationship in the transaction. The seller often sold his land with a low price, so the local elites would support the seller when he asked for more money after the transaction was done. Past scholars have pointed out that, although the seller could repeatedly ask for additional money, the total value should be within a reasonable range perceived as such by the general public. If what the seller asked for surpassed the upper limit, he would be regarded as greedy and even be accused or punished. I also examined the characteristic of land ownership as it was the basis of land transactions. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, if lineages or other local organizations were successful in making advancement, they then needed to own adequate amount of land in order to secure the extension of the lineages and their positions in the local society. Once the land became the joint family or lineage property, if somebody wanted to sell his piece of land, purchase privilege was given to the members in the seller’s lineage. Land signified the existence of the lineage; the lineage imposed rules to regulate any individual who wanted to sell land, making it difficult to have a land transaction completed with one attempt. Many sellers even reserved their privileged right to buy back the land sold. I cited several cases to demonstrate the official and legal support for Zhaojia. Based on the analysis described above, I looked at the social mechanisms for the institutionalization of this phenomenon. First of all, I explained the origin of the rationality in Zhaojia: an unstable market and the desire to avoid market risks: a growing population but a freeze in land increase, and societal turmoil. Secondly, I analyzed how rural society tried to establish the criteria for Zhaojia. Because kinorganizations, the local gentry, and the Imperial ideology all acknowledged the protection provided by Zhaojia for the weaker groups and its function to maintain local security, Zhaojia was then allowed to be practiced and the Imperial state laws gave local organizations the green light to set up and practice appropriate Zhaojia regulations. Finally, I explained how the elites, officially and locally at the villages, cooperated to mark the boundary of Zhaojia through the procedure of “villagemediationofficial attribution” to avoid local turbulence and to keep village harmony. This mechanism analysis convinced me that the existence of the economical behavior of Zhaojia was rooted in stable social relationships and protected by multiple organizations from villages to the Imperial state.