Table of Content

20 January 2015, Volume 35 Issue 1

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Back to Historical Views, Reconstructing the Imagination of Sociology: New Tradition of Classical and Historical Studies in Modern Chinese Transformation

QU Jingdong

2015, 35(1):  1-25. 

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Historical perspectives are the way to reconstruct the imagination of sociology, as classical sociologists did. There are many historical dimensions in Karl Marx’s social studies: dialectical analysis on history of nature; structural perspective on prehistory of the present and history of the present; reconstructed narratives of historical events; and finally, evolution of family, ownership, state, and social formations. In the same sense, in order to understand the reality of Chinese sociey, we’d better examine the transformation of modern Chinese social thoughts and their contexts. By reinterpreting theory of the Three Eras from classics Spring and Autumn Annals, Kang Youwei proposed that the establishment of the Idea of Cosmos Unity as the universal value for world history and the building of Confucius Religion for cultivation of mores had resulted in the successful transformation of Chinese society from Era of War to Era of Peace. On the contrary, Zhang Taiyan upheld the tradition of “Six Classics are all Histories”, and pushed forward the academic change from classics to history, which was carried out by Wang Guowei and Chen Yinke. Through the method of synthetical deduction in social sciences, Wang Guowei interpreted classics by history in the work of Institutional Change in Yin and Zhou Dynasty, confirming the original principle of Zhou Regime and Etiquette on basis of patriarchal clan system, and its spirit of law, mores and institutions. On the other hand, Chen Yinke investigated thoroughly the Middle Age of Chinese history from perspective of concourse and interattestation, and outlined a historical landscape of interfusion between Hu and Han nationalities, mixing of various religions, migration of diverse crowds, and integration of different cultures and mores. In short, there are two waves of change of thoughts in Chinese modern transformation, which set up the new tradition of Classical and Historical Studies, and institutional and spiritual sources of social and political construction from then on.

The Mourning Apparel System and Social Structure in China

ZHOU Feizhou

2015, 35(1):  26-48. 

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This paper is trying to explore the links between the contemporary social structure and the traditional mourning apparel system in China. In ancient China, there was so called sangfu (the mourning apparel) system that when a person died, his or her relatives wore special clothes for a special period to express their mourning. The pattern of the clothes and the length of mourning period had five classes, and the relatives wore different classes of clothes according to their relationship with the dead. For the closest relatives, the mourning apparel is the “heaviest” and the mourning period longest, and the clothes become “lighter” and mourning period shorter along with the relationship becoming more and more distant. This was called qinqin principle (being nicer to one’s closer relatives) in the mourning apparel system. Another principle was called zunzun (being more respectful for your older or higher authoritative relatives) which means that for father, grandfather etc. or higher male political leaders, the mourning class should be heavier and longer. The system was thus a “circle” with the self as the center. This system is actually the institutional base of chaxugeju, a concept coined by Professor Fei Xiaotong in his famous book, From the Soil: The Foundations of the Chinese Society. Based on the analysis of classical literature and the study of Confucian classics, the author points out that the two principles of the system are respectively “ren” (benevolence) mentioned by Confucius and “yi” (righteousness) by Mencius. They are the two most important virtues in ancient China. In contemporary era, to a large extent, the social structure is still based on the social circles in which guanxi and renqing are the most important considerations among social actors, as the Chinese still regard ren and yi as the important virtues in social relationships.


Ancestor and Chinese Lineage：What the Great Chinese Minds Thought about It

LIN Hu

2015, 35(1):  49-73. 

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 As widely agreed, lineage is one of the keys to understand traditional Chinese society. Nevertheless, ignoring ancient discourses on lineage, current scholarship often assumes that lineage was made and remade by and for power.
Instead, this article argues that we must take efforts to understand what the great Chinese minds thought about lineage and why, not taking the modern or postmodern position for granted. As a small step moving towards this goal, the paper gives an outline of lineage theory contained in Confucius Classics and that of NeoConfucians.
In Classics, lineage theory is composed of three parts: Zongfa, Mourning system, and ancestral temple system. Zongfa, the center of lineage theory, is the organizing principle of lineage that mandates that only the wife’s eldest son can serve as the lineage head, whose main responsibility is to lead the lineage to offer sacrifices to ancestors. While the Mourning system is also mainly based on social relationship, personal virtue plays a minor but important role. On the other hand, ancestral temple system is built largely according to personal virtue. Lineage activities center on funerals and sacrifices, and lineage head is granted neither political nor economic power to control the lineage.
While NeoConfucians inherited the main spirit of Classics, they also modified classical lineage theory in important ways in order to come to terms with the changing social reality. First, NeoConfucians allowed commoners to adopt Zongfa as the ruling principle for lineage making, because economic development and social mobility produced many rich and welleducated commoners. Secondly, the political hierarchy embedded in the ancestral temple system was largely abandoned. In Classics, ancestral temple system served as a supplement to Zongfa. But for NeoConfucians, the predicament was exactly the dying influence of Zongfa. Therefore, under this circumstance, ancestral temple became the main focus for the rebirth of Zongfa.
In short, this article argues that ancient discourses on lineage were not ideologies as frivolously assumed, but provide complex and insightful thoughts on human nature. At least partially due to this, lineage has played a long and vigorous role in Chinese society.

On Social Ground: Fieldwork Experience and Thoughts

YANG Shanhua SUN Feiyu

2015, 35(1):  74-91. 

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 How to understand the internal operational mechanism of Chinese society? As the core question of Chinese sociological scholar’s efforts of building up the subjectivity of China’s sociology, this question faces simultaneously three challenges: the research object, the research method, and how researchers define themselves. As a result of this effort, and based on our fieldwork experiences in both rural and urban Chinese societies, we intend to answer this question from an unusual angle. We coined a concept of “social ground”, referring to those“unchanged/stable subjects” in the history of Chinese society. This paper tries to explore this conception from such perspectives as the wisdom of life, familyoriented culture, morality, popularity and reputation, in order to understand the concept against the transformation of modern Chinese society. Our research finds out that the social ground which has always possessed the traditional characteristics does not oppose the transformation of the society. On the country, it combines with the new historical conditions and thus produces new possibilities of history while keeps its deepest historical meaning.

Analyzing the Corrosive and Differential Roles of Social Eating in Political Trust：The Side Effects of Guanxi Capital

CHEN Yunsong BIAN Yanjie

2015, 35(1):  92-120. 

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Using the data from the 2009 JSNET project, the present study explores the role of social eating on political trust among urban residents in eight Chinese cities. Based on a critical review of the existing literature, the authors of this article propose the hypothesis that social eating has corrosive effects on political trust, and identify social mechanisms through which guanxi  capital exerts its role. Using the instrumental variable ordinal Probit model, we have confirmed the negative effects of social eating, and analyzed how these effects are differentiated between and among social groups defined by institution, gender, education, and region. We show that there are significant negative effects of social eating on different dimensions of political trust, and the effects are different across social groups. Findings in this paper reveal that the process of accumulating, maintaining and mobilizing guanxi  capital via social eating among urban Chinese often comes with side effects at the society level.  Unlike traditional social capital studies, we focus on negative roles of socializing to unpack the association between trust and guanxi  capital. Although social eating is not the only way to generate and maintain guanxi  capital among the Chinese, it is the most important channel under the Chinese context. Although the corrosive role of social eating in itself is not a proof for the direct effect of social capital on politics, it can be seen as a byproduct of the social capital process. That is, a certain type of social behavior can both increase social capital and impair political trust simultaneously.

A Sociological Analysis on the Public Acceptance of GM Crops in China： Based on a Sampling Survey in 6 Cities

HE Guangxi ZHAO Yandong ZHANG Wenxia XUE Pin

2015, 35(1):  121-142. 

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 Based on the data of a largescale facetoface interview survey, this study presents an analysis of the acceptance of genemodified (GM) crops among Chinese residents. Departing from a conventional framework in this field which examines the consumers’“individual decisionmaking behavior”, this research intends to develop a “social action model” to explain the factors that influence individuals’decisionmaking about a new technology, by drawing upon risk society theory. In addition to “individual decisionmaking behavior”, this study identifies a number of affecting social factors, including “knowledge and cognitive ability”, “mass media”, and “institutional trust”. The results of the empirical analysis are summarized as follows: (1) The acceptance of new technologies, to some extent, is indeed a decisionmaking process by individuals based on the assessment of benefits (not examined in this study), risks and purchase power. However, this explanation is incomplete. In the face of a new technology, individuals can only make a “bounded rational choice” due to their limited knowledge, and the risks they consider are largely “constructive risks”. (2) The mass media plays an important role in the construction of “risks”. The risks perceived by the public, to some extent, are “shaped”. The traditional TV media have a stronger function of “shaping” the public opinion. In contrast, the Internet as new media plays a more complicated role: while increasing the amount of information available, the Internet also strengthens some people’s perception of risks due to the diversity of information it provides. (3) In understanding individuals’ decisionmaking about risks, institutional trust is an unignorable and indeed crucial factor. In the face of a new technology, individuals’ risk perception and decisionmaking behavior largely rely on institutional trust in various expert systems (including government), and once this trust declines or disappears, they will become very worried about and hostile toward new technologies.

Education and Perception of Distributive Justice: Based on Structural Explanation and Relative Deprived Theory

LI Yinghui

2015, 35(1):  143-160. 

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Education returns have increased significantly in the transitional china. However, it differs among people in different districts, industries, institutions, and sectors. Educational investment becomes even less rewarded due to recruitment expansion in higher education, which has unexpectedly resulted in diploma devaluation and unemployment problem for university graduates. Such complex realities arouse series of thoughtprovoking issues, such as “What is the attitude each education investor held towards his or her own education returns?” Moreover, “what is the relationship between education and one's perception of distributive justice?” At present, there are mainly two theories on perception of distributive justice, that is, the structural explanation and the relative deprived theory. The former proposes that people’s perception of distributive justice is determined by their objective socioeconomic status. The higher socioeconomic status he/she has, the more sense of distributive justice he/she perceives. However, the latter argues that one’s subjective comparison with others with the similar life experiences or social status affects his/her perceptions more significantly than his/her objective status. Hence, this study specifically aims to explain how education affects people’s perception of distributive justice within these two analytic logics. Our empirical results show that both logics make sense, indicating that  the effect of education on perception of distributive justice is much more complex than any single theory has claimed. As an indicator  of people’s superior status, educational background correlates positively with their perception of distributive justice. In other words, the one with higher education degree tends to justify his/her income distribution with favorable attitude. However, this trend changes when the social context or condition varies. As human capital investment, education may evoke one's expectation on his/her income level; that is, the more he/she has invested in education, the more he/she expects to obtain. So, the odds ratio of perception of distributive justice declines significantly with the gap between expected income and actual income increasing gradually, which indicates that the higher education one with, the faster the odds ratio of perception of distributive justice falls. This finding contributes to explain some theoretical paradox and reflects the fact that people may encounter psychological anomie if his or her education investment didn’t pay off. Since climbing upward through education is widely accepted in Chinese society, the finding of this study could also shed light on the situation of people’s judgment on the legitimacy of interest distribution in markettransition.

Religious Revival in Rural China and the Fate of “Religion” in China

LIANG Yongjia

2015, 35(1):  161-183. 

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The paper explores three aspects of the question of religious revival in rural China, one of the most “unexpected” phenomena since the beginning of Reform and Openup policy. Firstly, by offering a critical reappraisal to the three models of explaining religious revival—“invention of traditions”, “statesociety relation”, and “religious market theory”, the author argues that religion should not be reduced into such categories as “politics” or “economy”, but should be taken as a set of sui generis facts. In particular, the author delineates some premises implied in the religious market theory, premises that are rather Christian and cannot fit in the Chinese context. Secondly, it is necessary to understand the particular process of shaping “religion” by the political and intellectual elites in modern Chinese history. Academic claims to legitimize some of the religious practices merely continue the complicity within these elites. Thirdly, religious revival in rural China is largely separated from this process of elite complicity, implying an unknown mechanism potential to yield in an indigenous social theory. Referring to the recent model of “doing religion”, the author emphasizes the dimension of morality central to social solidarity. Finally, the author suggests that rather than recourse to secularization theory or market theory, we may try “gift model” to study this mechanism.

The Social Construction of Skill Formation:  A Sociological Approach to the Modernization of the Apprenticeship in Germany

WANG Xing

2015, 35(1):  184-205. 

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In the process of the modernization of apprenticeship in Germany, the governance model of social market lays the good foundation for the apprenticeship. For apprenticeship, its effective work depends on the industrial community and decommodification process. The establishment of these institutions can be traced back to the period of the industrial revolution. The patriarchal regulation of guild and the industrial democracy played a role in the process of change, which could solve the credible commitment problem in the skill formation. These factors keep the apprenticeship working in many enterprise of German, and because of this kind of skill formation system, German manufacturing industry has achieved a great success in the global market. Therefore, the skill formation system has become the key part of the institution package, which is called comparative institutional advantage of Germany. The conflicts between the stakeholders have shaped the evolution trajectory of the apprenticeship. In this sense, the process of skill formation is socially constructed. More attention from academia, especially from the fields of economy sociology and social policy should be paid to the study of the apprenticeship system, as it will shed new lights on the research about economic development and social protection in China.

Prejudice: Its Generation and Reduction：Review ofThe Nature of Prejudice

GAO Minghua

2015, 35(1):  206-228. 

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Richard A.Peterson’s Production of Culture Perspective

LU Wenchao

2015, 35(1):  229-242. 

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