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Table of Content

    20 January 2013, Volume 33 Issue 1
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    Articles
    Possession, Operation, and Governance as Three Conceptual Dimensions of Town and Township Enterprises: An Attempt Back to the Classical Social Sciences
    QU Jingdong
    2013, 33(1):  1-37. 
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    Through the review of the representative sociological studies on ownership of town and township enterprises, this article attempts to use three classical theoretical concepts of possession, operation, and governance to analyze the formative and the operational mechanisms of town and township enterprises. In the aspect of possession, these enterprises compromise different elements of public, common and private ownerships. In the aspect of operation, they utilize land contracts, enterprise contracts and the financial responsibility system in the institutional context of the twotrack regime. In the aspect of governance, they fuse different mechanisms of the institutional, knowledge, and mores dimensions together, and free the traditional familial, kinship linkage, and customary resources for reform and creativity in the practice. As key position of social process of multiple elements and moments, town and township enterprises not only provide opportunities for institutional innovations, but also embody the institutional spirit of reform period, which combines tradition, regime, and new market mechanism, and provides an enriched process of social development. This framework returning on the classical social theories will be conductive to reflection on the other phenomenon of organizational and institutional change in social and economical reform.

    Methodology and the Lifeworld：Revisit the Discussion on Schutz’s Intersubjectivity Theory
    SUN Feiyu
    2013, 33(1):  38-74. 
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    Based on Husserl’s phenomenology and Bergson’s philosophy of consciousness, Alfred Schutz, from an analysis of the consciousness behind individual actions, started theory building based on Weber’s social scientific conceptual system according to its key concept of “meaning” and further developed his own structure of social world by the method of the Ideal Type. In this work, the issue of otherness has raised a series of sociological questions, especially the question of intersubjectivity. Within the tradition of social thoughts, via Schutz’ beginning effort to answer the essential methodological question in modern sociology through the meaningful lifeworld that is based on the werelations, the probability of intersubjectivity is not only a key question as to how sociology is possible; it is also a question of how society is possible. In this paper, with the discussion of Schutz’s work placed within the history of methodological thinking, the author argues that Schutz’s work on sociological methodology provides us with a new possibility to understand the lifeworld of modern individual, and further, a way to reflect upon current sociological research in China.

    Morality, Politics, and Abstract Cosmopolitanism：An Analysis on The Division of Labor in Societs and Durkheim’s other Writings
    LIU Yonghua
    2013, 33(1):  75-112. 
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    Was Durkheim a nationalist or a cosmopolitan? To answer the question, the author proposes to go to Durkheim’s theoretical context of the moral discourse. Durkheim’s claim that morality begins with group membership definitely means that, in his analysis, different groups would differ in their levels. In the formative process of morality, the national state is undoubtedly given priority. If we must go back to the national state to interpret the formation of morality, this requires achieving cosmopolitanism within the national state. Therefore, Durkheim argued that, when the group’s ideal is just the specific expression of the human ideal, and when the civic ideal combines with the human general ideal to a great extent, we can realize the fusion of the specific and the general on the basis of the human nature, or move the universal morality downward to be realized in group morality. If cosmopolitanism must depend upon patriotism to come true, or if we cannot talk about the universal morality in the global context or human society, this means that we need go by means of internal construction in the national state to achieve the cosmopolitan ideal. This is distinctively liberal nationalism. At the same time, the formation of morality is not only based on group membership but also needs awareness that this qualification has a political basis. In other words, we should make corporate groups as politics participating groups engaged in the political life of the country as appropriate electoral units. Only when the country is subject to the constraint of such secondary intermediary political groups, can personal freedom be effectively protected. Therefore, Durkheim analyzed the modern social morality phenomenon on the basis of combined sense of “society” and “the social.” Finally, the article points out that in order to distinguish themselves from Durkheim’s theory of moral evolution, others are seeking their legitimacy in an era of globalization and pluralism including nationalism and a variety of identities, which undoubtedly challenges Durkheim’s theory of moral evolution.

    Ethnic Enclaves Revisited:Effects on Earnings of Migrant Workers in Urban China
    HANG Chunni ，XIE Yu
    2013, 33(1):  113-135. 
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    Among ruraltourban migrants, migrant workers from the same native place tend to concentrate in the same workplace. When this concentration is sufficiently dense, we may consider that place an enclave. According to the enclave literature of U.S. immigrants, working in places with the same ethnic groups may improve the economic wellbeing of immigrants. This study follows the same reasoning to test whether working with fellow provincials will increase the earnings of migrant workers in urban China. When we discuss the relationship between enclaves and pay, researchers should be aware of the impact of preexisting differences between the migrant workers who participate in enclaves from those who don’t. This preexisting selective heterogeneity may cause a biased estimation of the enclave effect if just based on a simple comparison of the earnings between enclave workers and nonenclave workers. Furthermore, there is heterogeneity in the enclave effects on the earnings among different groups of migrant workers. Therefore, a single estimate of the enclave effect may not be sufficient in capturing the variability in the impact of enclave participation of different groups. Considering heterogeneity, this study puts two questions to empirical test. First, among migrants with the same enclave participation propensity, do migrants who actually work in enclave firms earn more than migrants who work in nonenclave places? Second, what type of migrant workers gain the highest benefits from enclave participation? Using data from a 2010 survey of migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangzi River Delta, we matched enclave workers and nonenclave workers on their enclave participation propensity and compared their earnings. We found a positive average earnings return to enclave participation, although this effect was smaller than what had been found before propensity matching. Moreover, migrants with a higher enclave participation propensity benefited more from actual enclave participation than those with a low propensity.

    Social Status, Life Experiences, and Anxiety
    HUA Hongqin，WENG Dingjun
    2013, 33(1):  136-160. 
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    The economic development in China has attracted worldwide attention since the social transformation. However, with the abundance of material accumulation due to the rapid economic development, wealth distribution has been further polarized, social dissatisfaction has been growing, restlessness has contaminated people, and anxiety has become a common social phenomenon. This quantitative research explored the relationships between class position (objective social status), class identity (subjective social status), and life experiences from the critical class perspective. Here are the results: Social status (both objective and subjective) and life experiences have significant effects on the generation of anxiety; those from low social status and those who have experienced unjust treatment are more likely to develop anxiety; relative to objective social status and subjective social status, life experiences play a more critical role in generating anxiety. But objective social status is the basis that not only directly causes anxiety but also restrains people’s class identity via their life experiences, and in this way, indirectly affects anxiety. This article argues that, social anxiety brought about by social status and life experiences tends to affects individuals in a negative manner. The mutual influence during the interaction among people is likely to make people aware of the cause of their anxiety and come to a “common sense” for an explanation, which conversely intensifies the “common sense” and further amplifies their anxiety. Through such an “amplifying” mechanism, the relationships of objective social status, life experiences and subjective social status with anxiety will generate three forms of anxiety, respectively: status anxiety mainly caused by low income, experience anxiety due to unjust life experiences, and interpersonal comparison anxiety based on wealth polarization.

    Restriction and Construction: The Mechanism in the Presentation of Environmental Issues—A Contemplation of Citizens’ Opposition to Building L Garbage Incineration Plant in City A
    GONG Wenjuan
    2013, 33(1):  161-194. 
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     Recently, the main theoretical task of environmental sociology is gradually shifting from trying to identify factors detrimental to the environment to aiming at discovering effective mechanisms to improve the environment. The prerequisite of the latter goal is a clear description of what leads to the central environmental issues. Based on the review of the research on environmental problems from the perspectives of environmental realism and environmental constructivism, this paper analyzes the social mechanism in the presentation of environmental issues, which is explained in the case of citizens’ opposition to building L Garbage Incineration Plant in City A. Firstly, the mechanism for the emergence of environmental issues consists of three closelyconnected links: group interest conflict; cognitive difference and claim competition; and power, resources and strategic operation. Environmental agenda not only is a continuous extension of the objective environmental conditions but also involves people’s attention, cognition and judgment. On the one hand, the evolving of environmental issues is restricted by the established patterns of the structural factors such as interests, power and resources. On the other hand, it is also adjusting its direction, contents and expression to people’s constantly changing cognition and strategic action. In turn, successfully putting new environmental issues on the agenda may alter the original structural constraint. Secondly, there is a gradual transition in how environmental issues are presented, that is, from being guided by the government or the elite to environmental stakeholders working together. This transition indicates diverse interest groups and also, signifies a change in the social structure. Thirdly, the two characteristics of environmental issues, uncertainty and imitation, suggest a risky society, and evidences the public desire for environmental justice and political equality, as well as the tension between the citizens’ social growth and structural limitation.

    Development of Hong Kong Social Welfare NGOs in the Era of New Public Management
    TIAN Rong
    2013, 33(1):  195-224. 
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    he global third sector is at a turning point and being challenged by the transformation. Using an indepth case study method, this study investigated how New Public Management (NPM) had influenced the development of social welfare NGOs in Hong Kong since the mid1990s. This paper first reviews NPM’s development and its impact on the marketoriented reform in the area of social welfare in Hong Kong. It then analyzes the influences of these NPM reforms on the social welfare NGOs in regards to their commercialization trends, change in the organizational form, value basis and relation with the government. The finding suggests that Hong Kong government wants to have some financial relief and that the policy to have lump sum released to better the efficiency of public service does have an impact on the commercialization of the NGOs in the social welfare field, regardless whether it is contracting with the government or it is related to other types of revenues from commercialized items. New management techniques and new management operational structures are being created in response. Commercialized management and the rise of social enterprises are the results of the changes in Hong Kong NGOs’ organizational forms.While the penetration of NPM values into NGOs is deep, there are variations across the sample of 12 NGOs. Three types of NGOs can be identified in this study with regard to their different historical origins and functions, namely, operators, pioneers and advocators. Their various strategies in responding to NPM reforms and the changes in their relations to the government are discussed. This article argues that there is evidence of a tradeoff in organizational values for marketization suggested by previous studies. Given the continuing financial austerity and the growing authoritarianism of the government, the future of NGOs and their role in developing civil society in the region is quite uncertain. However, there is still one type of NGOs initiated by professionals in earlier years, and they are working to influence the business sector to realign values towards promoting social welfare as a new focus of advocacy.