Sociology In China Research Articles

The Making of a Sociology with Distinctive Chinese Characteristics

Abstract: This article re-examines the recent history of Chinese sociology from a sociological viewpoint by adopting a perspective that transcends the official powerholders’ framework. It focuses on the period between 1978 and 2023, and offers a descriptive analysis of the six features of socialist sociology with distinctive Chinese characteristics under Xi Jinping’s regime. It also introduces the concept of “cooperation to resist” and identifies the subfields of sociology that are at risk of decline. The article contends that sociology in China has faced a crisis in the past decade due to its increased utilisation as a tool to support the authoritarian vision of China’s modernisation. Such a shift has constrained the discipline and limited the scope of its inquiries, so that it increasingly focuses on politically safe subjects and topics that avoid critical scrutiny. Consequently, such scholarship blurs the boundaries between academic knowledge and propaganda, ultimately compromising the quality of scholarly work in favour of political power.

Social prediction: a new research paradigm based on machine learning

Sociology is a science concerned with both the interpretive understanding of social action and the corresponding causal explanation, process, and result. A causal explanation should be the foundation of prediction. For many years, due to data and computing power constraints, quantitative research in social science has primarily focused on statistical tests to analyze correlations and causality, leaving predictions largely ignored. By sorting out the historical context of "social prediction," this article redefines this concept by introducing why and how machine learning can help prediction in a scientific way. Furthermore, this article summarizes the academic value and governance value of social prediction and suggests that it is a potential breakthrough in the contemporary social research paradigm. We believe that through machine learning, we can witness the advent of an era of a paradigm shift from correlation and causality to social prediction. This shift will provide a rare opportunity for sociology in China to become the international frontier of computational social sciences and accelerate the construction of philosophy and social science with Chinese characteristics.

What When it is a Jungle: A Response to Qin et al. (2019)

Generating new knowledge and inspiring future studies are part of the value of a review. While acknowledging the contribution of the bibliometric analysis published in this journal by Qin et al. to understanding the development of environmental and resource sociology in USA, this commentary discussed the relevance of its claims and the bibliometric method it employed to promoting integrated environment sociology in China. Given the fact that the institutional/disciplinary establishments and self-consciousness of researchers in China differ largely from that in USA, future efforts need focus on the identification of common research units/issues and development of multi/inter/trans-disciplinary research frameworks for studies on environment-society interactions. When it is guided with valid scientific questions aiming to understand the complementarity of different disciplinary knowledge, bibliometric analysis can be powerful for cross-disciplinary communication and cooperation.

Социология деревни: китайские и западные теоретические традиции

The paper analyzes the Chinese and Western theoretical traditions in the studies on rural sociology. The emphasis is placed on the approaches of Chinese and Western sociologists to examining the problems of a village in the era of urbanization. A comprehensive sociological analysis of the rural economic development remains a major development challenge for social sciences, particularly for the sociology of China. This analysis implies both a review of theoretical studies on the village in Western social sciences and the creation of a Chinese-adapted concept of economic and social research into the complex social adaptation of modern Chinese village to the global economic processes. It is difficult for Chinese rural sociologists to develop this branch of the sociology and create opportunities for acquiring new knowledge on urgent, acute, complex social and economic and demographic problems of the modern Chinese village without such a theoretical integration. The aforementioned Western theoretical approaches may well become the basis for the modern rural sociology in China because, since the early 20th century, Chinese researchers have been striving to escape from forced empiricism and rise to the high scientific and theoretical level of understanding the transformation of the Chinese peasantry.

The Origin of Management Ideas in Sociology in Chinese Society at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries

n the beginning of the 20th century, China faced the need to look for new ways of development and, like other countries, turned towards the resources provided by social sciences in the attempt to comprehend and interpret this experience. This article reviews and analyzes Chinese sociological thought of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing on management issues. The subject of this work is the genesis of management ideas in sociology in Chinese society. The material for the study comprises the works of thinkers, publicists, and political figures of that time who set themselves the task of applying sociological theories to the development of the country. The main problem discussed in the article is the ratio of Western and native Chinese views and ideas in sociological approaches to the study of managerial processes in China. The analysis of materials from that time shows three different tendencies in the formation of management ideas in sociology; identifying the prerequisites for a new science to be used in traditional ideas about management, demonstrating the predominance of Western science over Chinese traditional sciences, and the attempts at synthesizing the first two tendencies. The conclusion of the article is that, by the time of the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, the nascent management ideas in sociology in China were a heterogeneous fusion of Western and traditional Chinese concepts, and was closely related to other sciences such as political science, sociology, philosophy, etc. During this period, traditional ideas that were largely distinguished by speculation and ideology bore the function of an ideological “shield” to preserve the integrity of the Chinese nation in the context of the growing influence of Western powers on Chinese society.

中国社会科学院社会学研究所・南開大学社会学系編 『社会学参考書目』

中国社会科学院社会学研究所・南開大学社会学系編 『社会学参考書目』

Sociology in Times of Crisis: Chen Da, National Salvation and the Indigenization of Knowledge

Chen Da was one of the foremost sociologists of China from the 1920s to the 1940s. His intellectual habitus took shape from the long crisis that defined Chinese intellectual life from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries, a period of continuous imperial assault on Chinese sovereignty. As China integrated into the capitalist world-system, neo-Confucian structures of knowledge came into question. Intellectuals took up sociology to guide China’s transition from an empire to a nation-state. Through his studies on labor, migration, and population, Chen Da contributed to the institutionalization of sociology in China. Chen sought to craft a theory of Chinese development that followed universal trajectories of progress but was also attuned to the complexity of Chinese society on the ground. Through his efforts to indigenize sociology, Chen developed a non-Marxist historical materialism, a deterritorialized and pluralistic conceptualization of China as a nation, and a theory of eugenic transformation centered on the concept of “mode of living.” The questions which Chen Da confronted are emblematic of the predicament faced by Chinese social scientists today, who again struggle with the dynamics of a deterritorialzied “Greater China,” rising social fragmentation, and refigured eugenic discourses and policies that aim to craft the Chinese people into ideal national subjects fit for post-socialist development.

Academic Discourse Right/Power and the Development of Chinese Sociology

作为“权利”的学术话语权,主要有创造更新权、意义赋予权、学术自主权等类 型;作为“权力”的学术话语权,主要有指引导向权、鉴定评判权、行动支配权等类 型。这些也体现在中国社会学百余年的发展历程中。在中国社会学初创阶段,严复等 人在社会学本土化和学术话语创新方面进行了尝试。费孝通经历了中国社会学前期发 展阶段近20年及后期56年全过程,其学术历程对于中国社会学发展史具有典型意义。 在理论自觉基础上努力达致学术话语权的制高点,是中国社会学从世界学术格局边陲 走向中心的一条必由之路。 关键词: 学术话语权 中国社会学 理论自觉 学术话语 As a kind of right (quanli 权利), academic discourse rights include the right to create and innovate, to endow with meaning and to academic autonomy. As a kind of power (quanli 权力), it refers to the power to guide, judge, control and so on. These rights and powers have been pursued as Chinese sociology developed for over a century. At the inception of sociology in China, Yan Fu and other scholars experimented with localizing sociology and innovating academic discourse. Fei Xiaotong’s life covered nearly 20 years of Chinese sociology’s early development and another 56 years of its later development; his academic journey epitomizes the historical development of Chinese sociology. The only way for Chinese sociology to move from the periphery of world academia into the center is to endeavor, on the basis of theoretical self-consciousness, to seize the commanding heights of academic discourse rights.

Toward a Transdisciplinary Environmental and Resource Sociology in China

Environmental sociology and the sociology of natural resources constitute two research traditions regarding the interactions between societies and the natural world. While discussion of the relationships between these two fields is largely restricted to the United States, their implications for developing disciplines focused on environment and society issues in other countries have seldom been addressed. In this article we introduce the dialogue between environmental sociology and the sociology of natural resources into the context of China, where environmental sociology is being established as an important academic subdiscipline. We suggest that with a transdisciplinary orientation, environmental sociology in China holds promise for integrating environmental and natural resource sociologies in responding to China's strategic goal of building a “resource-efficient and environment-friendly” society.

Sociology in China: A Survey on Research group and Research subject of Sociological Studies

Sociology in China: A Survey on Research group and Research subject of Sociological Studies

A Review of Environmental Sociology and the Sociology of Natural Resources: Insights for the Development of Environmental Sociology in China

Abstract Environmental sociology and the sociology of natural resources are two key subdisciplines of the sociological study on the interactions between nature and human society. Previous discussion on the relationships of these two fields has largely focused on their distinctions and synthesis in western (particularly American) academia. Environmental sociology emerged as an important sociological subdiscipline in China in the early 1990s and is under vigorous disciplinary construction at present. By contrast, the sociology of natural resources is still a novel term for most Chinese researchers. This article provides a systematic review of recent literature on the relationships between environmental and natural resource sociologies, which should provide important implications for the further development of environmental sociology in China.

Sociology in China

Sociology in China

Sociology and Social Problem Research

1. For more than one and half centuries,, sociology has been discipline which constantly deals with the social problems as sociological issues. This is also true in China where sociology is much younger. But from the early beginnings of the establishment of sociology in China in the 1920's, sociology was considered as a branch of (natural) science of/for society specifically created to deal with the social problems that ordinary everyday people have to face. Now is not the time for me to list such social problems which we all have known very well, nor is it the time for me to introduce the work that my colleagues in China have been doing. For instance during the last 15 years my Institute and some other colleges in China collectively have done research on the social problems and sociological analysis and, as result, we have published annual reports on the social issues since 1992. 2. However, at this time, the time we all have encountered the challenges from globalization, we need to acknowledge that, ironically, along with the development of sociology as an academic discipline, social problems actually increase in almost all parts of the world, and also they extend to regional, transnational or global levels. Sociologists in China, like those colleagues all over the world, today seem intellectually less influential, and practically less useful, than before. This is so partly because our interpretations of the quickly run-away global world are left far behind the actual pace of the change; and sometimes, because of this, are so different from and even contradictory to, the common sense of ordinary people; partly because we have been so professionalized that ordinary people cannot really follow what we are talking about, even they wanted to, and even if we want to talk to them, usually because we are using some very specific categories, too professionalized in many cases, to describe an d to explain the social world where ordinary people organize and comprehend their activities and interactions. 3. In other words, we enjoy too much talking to/among ourselves in order to make distinction from others, not only from the ordinary people, but also from those in other disciplines. What is more, even amongst sociologists, we do not really talk to others often, once again, because of the high professionalization of the discipline. Professionalization is necessary, of course, for the development of sociology as specific academic discipline, which no doubt needs further intellectual division of labor amongst ourselves. 4. As consequence, however, when others increasingly feel difficult, and thus are not able/do not want, to listen to us, we gradually isolate ourselves from others. Being increasingly professionalized we believe we have developed some very systematic and analytical frameworks for interpretations of the ongoing social change and social problems. On most occasions, however, not only our interpretations seem too specific, but also we do not like to provide any practical solutions to people either in policy making or in the actual life world. Each time when we simply try to show ordinary people, and to the business elite and policy makers, how complicated the possible reasons are behind any visible social problems, their typical response is: interesting, but so what? 5. This very difference between sociologists and other professionals, especially economists and, in many cases political scientists, tells us why we are so marginal and they are increasingly so central. 6. I have always encouraged my colleagues in China by pointing out the very fact that it is sociologists since the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, if not earlier, who have shaped the very basic ways of thinking about, and presenting of, modern societies. As result, people in modem times, almost all became sociologists to certain extent, even without awareness of being so. …

China’s urban residential community in the course of transfer of social pattern

Even though the study of urban sociology in China is just a beginning, it doesn’t mean that urban social problems in China are new or simple. As a very sensitive field, urban residential community has not been deeply analysed before owing to various reasons. This article tries to start with the background of China’s social development and analyse the pattern, essence and evolution direction of China’s urban residential community which is in the course of transfer of social pattern. This article first analyzes the functional mechanism of seven main elements affecting Chinese urban residential community in the course of transfer of social pattern. Some of the elements come into being under the social economic background, with Chinese characteristics, and have a profound influence on urban residential community. Based on that, the author then respectively infers the evolution of four main patterns of urban residential communities in China now. Finally, it puts forward the basic principles of urban community development in the current transfer period in China, and with a development eyesight, it makes a summary of the general characteristics of the Chinese urban residential community in the future.

The Development of Sociology in China: A Delegation Report. By Nan Lin, Victor Nee, William Parish and Elena Yu. [Committee on Scholarly Communication with China, 1992. 107pp.

The Development of Sociology in China: A Delegation Report. By Nan Lin, Victor Nee, William Parish and Elena Yu. [Committee on Scholarly Communication with China, 1992. 107pp.

Sociology in China: Its Past, Present, and Future

This and the next issue of Chinese Sociology and Anthropology are devoted to Tenth Anniversary of the New Chinese Sociology, 1979-1989. This theme will be treated in three parts: The introduction will discuss the development and characteristics of Chinese sociology; the translated articles will serve to illustrate the breadth and depth of sociological inquiry in China over the past ten years; and the chronology of Chinese sociology, 1895-1989, will highlight major events and achievements. We hope to shed some light upon the sociology of sociology.

Socialism and Sociology in China

Socialism and Sociology in China

A report on the development of sociology in China since its political division

This article is a brief report on the fate of Chinese sociology after the Communist takeover in 1949. In mainland China there are no longer any departments of sociology in the universities; the discipline has been integrated into other departments where it is taught as an interdisciplinary subject. In contrast, in Taiwan sociology has developed primarily along the lines of American sociology, and research and new currents of thought are still progressing.

The Development and Death of Chinese Academic Sociology: A Chapter in the Sociology of Sociology

Although 1949 is not a magical year in Chinese history in the sense of marking a total break with the centuries-old traditions and culture, it is appropriate to say that 1949 is the year which symbolizes the end of Chinese sociology. In this paper we attempt to give a socio-historical account of the genesis, development, struggle and then death of sociology in China, covering a period of more than half a century. The first part of the paper will deal with the institutionalization of sociology as a transplanted Western flower in Chinese soil; the second part describes and analyses how Chinese sociology struggled for its legitimacy for survival under Chinese Communism and how the battle was lost.

The New Sociology in China

The New Sociology in China