Sociological Studies is compiled by the Institute of Sociology, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The Journal is devoted to the study of sociology and has become one of the leading professional academic journals in social science.
Positivistic sociology holds that the operation of human society is subject to the same constant law as the natural law, thus falling into the trap of “historical determinism.” The sociology of understanding rejects the concept of positivistic sociology, which pays attention to the role of human will and motivation in the social and historical field, but falls into the trap of the agnosticism of irrationality. Unfortunately, positivistic sociology and sociology of understanding make the same mistake in expelling value judgment and moral evaluation from the legitimate domain of sociology. The historical idea of Marxism confirms the necessity in the course of social development, which means the necessary conditions for the emergence and existence of events must be met, otherwise this kind of things cannot appear or continue to exist. In other words, not all other possibilities of historical development have been ruled out in the view of the historical idea of Marxism. This necessity is not incompatible with free will, so as to avoid the agnosticism of irrationality and historical determinism. At the same time, Marxism’s commitment to liberty—“human emancipation”—helped it bypass the quagmire of relativism. These characteristics shaped the basic characters of Marxist sociology from two aspects of experience and normativity, and laid the foundation of the basic spirit of Marxism sociology, namely, scientificity and liberty, which distinguished it from the so-called “sociological Marxism.”
The world-wide growth of precarious work has created a new type of labor market segmentation, and calls for cross-society comparison study. Chinese mainland and China’s Hong Kong facilitate such a comparison, since the two societies operated in quite different socioeconomic institutions have experienced the same change of employment relations. By analyzing two representative and comparable survey data, this research has found similarity as well as discrepancy regarding to occurrence and segmentation of precarious work in the two labor markets. In general, precarious work distributes in more economic sectors in Chinese mainland than it does in China’s Hong Kong, while it engenders less segmentation in the former in the labor market. This is closely related to the institutional and practical differences in labor market regulation of the two societies.
Using surveys, interviews and ethnographic data, this paper examines emerging Chinese middle-class families’ presentation of art in their home in addition to their reception and consumption of abstract art. The author argues that class attributes (i. e., income and education) cannot predict the differences in art consumption among the Chinese middle class. Regarding ownership of abstract art in the home, symbolic boundaries exist between occupational status groups. These boundaries distinguish between two traditionally perceived groups: those with high cultural capital (personnel in culture, education, and art industries) and those with lower cultural capital (personnel in manufacturing and service industries). However, consuming abstract art is not necessarily a signal of one’s class status, nor does it function as a “legitimate” taste. Middle-class consumers instead emphasize that interacting with abstract art in the home creates the imaginative capability to wander and connects one’s own life experiences. This finding joins a growing literature in the “new sociology of art” that emphasizes the aesthetic properties and materiality of art and taste in action, which further undermines Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory that sees taste as a static social symbol. Lastly, even for upper-and upper-middle classes, their consumption of abstract art is often exaggerated, as there is a big gap between liking abstract art and owning abstract art. This reveals the different self-presentations of the emerging Chinese middle classes in public and private spaces, indicating their impression management and the conflicting self.
The income gap among industries in China is usually explained by the theory of segmented labor market. However, this perspective cannot explain why the finance industry within the monopolized industries receives the highest average income, while the manufacturing industry within the competitive industries receives much lower income. This paper argues that it can be explained by the way how China has involved in the processes of economic globalization. Exposed to opportunities and challenges of economic globalization, the state takes strategies to liberalize its manufacturing industry while highly protecting its finance industry. This paper contrasts the average income between the monopoly and the competitive industries, as well as that between finance and manufacturing. The panel data analyses spanning from 2000-2014 show that the bigger size of foreign trade is, the higher average income of the finance industry will be, and the lower income of the whole monody industries will be; at the same time, FDI reduces the average income of the manufacturing. This research reveals that understanding income inequality between industries in China should be integrated with the perspective of economic globalization, and thus advancing the literature of segmented labor market.
Due to advances in big data analysis, computational social science is now firmly in the spotlight of social science research. This rapidly emerging field integrates social theory and data mining, giving researchers many new tools to use and research topics to explore. In the research process, social theories provide an overarching framework to guide researchers’ use of qualitative and quantitative surveys. With these aids researchers collect ground truth to test the results of data mining. In turn, these results provide evidence for researchers to build new theories. Big data can also be used to test new theories, which helps construct predictive models and infer new facts. The three-way interplay of social theory, data mining and predictive models is the background for this paper’s examination of Chinese VC firms’ industrial network data.
From the traditional birth custom, newly born babies are not admitted as family members at the beginning. But through those four separate and interdependent rituals, namely, isolation, purification and reorganization, and incorporation , newborn babies are separated from the supernatural world, and through the lifts and transition of “Mother of Nature,” they are eventually integrated into ethical society. The rites of passage after childbirth add more social and cultural meaning to the human biological reproduction process, and then achieve the reproduction of men and their social relations. This finding inspires us to reflect on maternity care patterns and family relationships in the context of instrumental rationality.
Based on the concept and proposition framework of groupology (
qunxue), this article puts forward that the essence of groupology includes four aspects: tend-to-group, able-to-group, good-at-group and happy-for-group. People-orientation, integration, coherence and practicality are the four characteristics of groupology. Groupology shares common research objects and research fields with the Western sociology to some extent, and also has similar perspective and method of proving theory by experience. This article argues that groupology will be revitalized among the worldwide contention of diverse schools of thought in the 21st century.
The new sociology of arts is on the rise in recent years. It is different from Howard S. Becker’s and Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of art in the sense that it brings the aesthetics back to its central concerns. It has changed the focus of the sociology of arts, which was on the interaction between people and people, to the focus on the interaction between people and things. The sociology of music of Tia DeNora and Antoine Hennion were two examples of this trend. Tia DeNora claimed that we should return to Adorno, which meant that we should return to his concerns about aesthetics. She still followed Howard Becker’s empirical studies in research methods. She argued that the power of music came from the interaction between listeners and music. Antoine Hennion suggested that taste was not a tool to symbolize the social status but a reflexive activity, and the subject produced himself in the attachment with the object. This is in consistent with the trend of the return of the theory of aesthetics and has important reference significance for the study of arts in China today.
