 Subjects -> SOCIOLOGY (Total: 553 journals)
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- On the quadrants of the thing-world relations: a critical revision of
Hartmut Rosa’s resonance theory in terms of thing-world
Abstract: The most valuable contribution of Hartmut Rosa’s social theory is the extension of the scope of Critical Theory from the individual world and the social world to the thing-world. However, Rosa’s analysis of the thing-world is somewhat insufficient. The present article provides an attempt to apply new materialism to the thing-world to compensate for the missing elements of Rosa’s resonance theory. An examination and integration of two of the most representative theories of new materialism, namely agential realism and object-oriented ontology, yield four types (or quadrants) of thing-world relations based on intra-action or inter-action and on inclusion or exclusion: namely resonance, alienation, appropriation, and catastrophe. This quadrant can provide a clearer criterion for resonance in Rosa’s Critical Theory, and manifest that the problem in contemporary society we have to concern might exclusion instead of alienation.
PubDate: 2023-05-22
- Gender in mathematics: how gender role perception influences mathematical
capability in junior high school
Abstract: Based on the China Education Panel Survey, this study discusses how gender role perception influences the mathematical capability of female students from the multilevel perspectives of individual, family, school, and region. This study finds that the stereotypical view of gender roles held by students and parents has a significant impact on the mathematical capability of both sexes, with a positive effect on male students and a negative effect on female students. However, the threat of gender stereotypes does not have a negative impact on female students. In addition, the number and sex of children in the family and the local sex ratio have no significant impact on the mathematical capability of either male or female students. Therefore, the major factors affecting ‘females’ mathematics learning are the stereotypical views of the relationship between gender and mathematics held by female students and families rather than the tradition of favoring men over women.
PubDate: 2023-05-22
- Globalizing the sociology of the arts and culture: East Asian perspectives
Abstract: In this editorial, I argue for a globalized sociology of the arts and culture that transcends West-centered theories and practices. To this end, two interrelated perspectives—global and decentering—are needed. The article commences with a brief overview of the emergence of the sociology of arts in the West, and synthesizes major themes emerging from articles in the thematic series and the existing literature on creative cultures in East Asia. These themes include local–global dynamics (such as flows, legitimacy, and the centrality of the local), regionalization, state support and control, and theorizing beyond the arts. Finally, I highlight several promising directions for future research, and emphasize that East Asian perspectives present distinct opportunities to advance the sociology of the arts and culture.
PubDate: 2023-05-15
- Negotiating filial care in transitions: an ethnographic study of family
involvement in China’s nursing homes
Abstract: Based on ethnographic research conducted in two nursing homes in China, this article examines how institutional eldercare reshapes the expectations and practices of filial piety. It finds that families accept institutional care as a solution to the elderly care deficit. They expect a new division of care between labor and love, assigned to paid care workers and family members, respectively. This ideal of care division is rooted in the “intimate turn” in Chinese family life. Nevertheless, many family members go beyond this care division and remain deeply involved in nursing homes. On the one hand, adult children take on the responsibility to manage surrogate caretakers to improve the quality of care. On the other hand, they continue to provide personal care and companionship. Sharing family time is made the highest priority, especially in the face of impending death. This study goes beyond the binary division between commercial care and family care and sheds light on the transformation of filial piety in the commodification of eldercare in contemporary China.
PubDate: 2023-05-15
- Stabilization and structuralization: transformations of China's labor
market from the perspective of new institutionalism (2006–2017)
Abstract: Precarious work in China has drawn increasing attention, and this paper examines its changing trends from 2006 to 2017. It finds that as the state intensifies its intervention in the labor market, employers face a conflicting institutional environment with the demands of the technological environment. Employers meet the legitimacy requirements of state policy by increasing the number of stable jobs on the one hand and reducing the labor costs of unstable workers on the other hand to smooth out the increase in labor costs caused by the increase in stable workers, resulting in a stronger segmentation of the “stable–unstable” dichotomy. These two processes are more pronounced in the private sector because of the stronger tensions between legitimization and performance maximization.
PubDate: 2023-04-17
- The moral and political challenges of Hartmut Rosa’s theory of
resonance
Abstract: This paper explores a series of challenges presented by Hartmut Rosa’s concept of resonance viewed in the context of the normative and political dimensions of critical theory, a tradition in which he explicitly places his work (even as he draws on a wide range of other scholarly fields and domains). First, a tension between the anthropological and sociocultural aspects of his project raises questions about whether the avowed political commitments of the project can be incorporated into its theoretical framework. Second, the variability with which resonance can present, and its fundamentally pathic nature, makes it difficult to imagine how it might serve an emancipatory interest. Beyond this, the critical diagnosis of forms of impaired or deficient resonance introduces methodological questions with moral consequences. Despite these challenges, Rosa’s project importantly calls for a renewed relation to the world, one that shares affinities with parallel developments within the humanities.
PubDate: 2023-03-21
- Familial affections vis-à-vis filial piety: the ethical challenges facing
eldercare under neo-familism in contemporary China
Abstract: The present study demonstrates that the values and practices of neo-familism are altering the ethical foundation of eldercare in a similar way as they did in other areas of family life. The chief ethical challenges include the shift of the center of gravity from ancestors to children or grandchildren, the inversion of the hierarchical order within the oneness of parent–child identity, the saliency of eldercare qinqing discourse derived from the intimate and emotional turn in family life, the importance of family history as the keeper of the balance sheet of qinqing interactions, and the emerging pursuit of distributive justice in the sphere of private life. Working together, these challenges have effectively destabilized the principle of filial piety as the ethical foundation of eldercare and, at the same time, they have contributed to the formation of a dining ethics of eldercare. The article ends with a sketch of the main features of the emerging qinqing ethics and a call for more innovative thinking out of the gatekeeping box of filial piety paradigm in the sociology of Chinese family.
PubDate: 2023-03-20
- Ritualized world relations: a Confucian critique of Rosa’s
limitations on resonance
Abstract: Hartmut Rosa argues that our modern and post-modern societies can be understood through the notion of dynamic stabilization—institutions require growth to maintain themselves. Part of the impetus behind the acceleration that drives dynamic stabilization is the desire to make the world more available, attainable, and accessible. On both the institutional and individual levels, this is translated into making the world more within our reach, more engineerable, predictable, and controllable. Paradoxically, success in these areas is often accompanied by the world becoming increasingly silent, cold, and unresponsive. We feel alienated or that our world relation has failed. Rosa’s solution is to reestablish resonance with the world. In this paper, we argue that his notion of resonance depends on a degree of atomic agency that muffles its own efficacy. The Confucian notion of ritual offers a more dispersed notion of agency. Rather than seeing oneself, others, and the world as distinct agents or indivisible entities, a ritualized approach sees them as mutually constitutive. It is true even on the level of agency, which drastically changes our relationship with the world.
PubDate: 2023-03-17
DOI: 10.1186/s40711-023-00184-7
- Platform governance and sociological participation
Abstract: The positive and negative effects of the participation of digital platform companies in governance are a major issue of the times. Starting from the three subfields of internal governance, external governance, and co-governance, we construct an analytical framework for digital platform governance to understand the four-sided relationship among digital platform companies, the state, the market, and society. From the perspective of enterprise autonomy, we should view the effectiveness of platform company participation in social governance dialectically. The key of promoting good platform governance is to improve the external structural pressure from the state, promote the reform of the endogenous governance of enterprises, and build a sustainable architecture for co-governance. The mission of sociologists includes not only explanation but also intervention.
PubDate: 2023-03-07
DOI: 10.1186/s40711-023-00181-w
- The spear of capital and the shield of labor: Chinese model of emotional
labor in domestic work
Abstract: The theory of emotional labor, originating from the institutional background of the Western social and cultural system, is committed to criticizing the emotional management and emotional alienation of service workers under capital discipline. This paper introduces the construction of social relations with acquaintances typical in Chinese rural society into the analytical framework. It presents a Chinese model of automatized emotional labor, different from the model of commercialized emotional labor, by analyzing the emotional model acquisition in the professional development process of domestic workers and the mechanisms of formation, maintenance, and reproduction of the model in the labor process. In the new model, consumers (customers) and workers are equal and mutually beneficial interactive subjects, and emotional labor is no longer the spear of capital but instead becomes a shield for workers against challenges in the labor process. Therefore, this paper puts forward a theoretical reflection on consumers–workers under the model of commercialized emotional labor.
PubDate: 2023-01-12
DOI: 10.1186/s40711-022-00179-w
- Work trajectories and status attainment process: a study using sequence
analysis
Abstract: Applying sequence analysis methods to work trajectories recorded in the 2012 China Labor Force Dynamics Survey, this study examines the types of work trajectories in China’s urban labor market in three dimensions: employment status, organizational type, and work position. The findings suggest that along with the market transition, China’s urban labor market is experiencing diverse and complex job mobility patterns. This study identifies four types of work trajectories: the merit-based work trajectory, the blue-collar’s work trajectory in the private sector, the blue-collar’s work trajectory in state-owned enterprises, and the self-employed trajectory. These four typical work trajectories have significantly different influences on individuals’ attainment of socioeconomic status and elite status. This study sheds light on the microprocesses in status attainment by examining the role of work trajectories from a longitudinal perspective.
PubDate: 2023-01-06
DOI: 10.1186/s40711-022-00180-3
- English proficiency as a performance of digital social capital:
understanding how Chinese study abroad students use WeChat for the
symbolic purpose of English language learning
Abstract: This study investigates how Chinese study abroad students utilize WeChat for the symbolic purpose of English language learning while exploring what particular features of WeChat are beneficial to one’s English learning. It also explores how English proficiency acts as a form of digital social capital in China, with a particular focus on how WeChat acts as a stage from which users can perform their perceived higher-social class. By deploying a symbolic interactionist approach and conceptualizing an appropriate theoretical framework, this study aims to determine whether students fully engage with WeChat’s symbolic meaning as an English learning tool. Qualitative methods of research consisting of semi-structured interviews and a walkthrough of WeChat are carried out which investigates how English learning features are accessed on WeChat and how they ultimately shape learners’ symbolic meanings of WeChat. It is found that performing high English proficiency on WeChat is associated with negative connotations (bragging) due to links between English level and class background. Moreover, factors such as filial piety prevented users from performing their English proficiency and fully engaging with WeChat as a learning tool also.
PubDate: 2022-11-25
DOI: 10.1186/s40711-022-00177-y
- Power resources and workplace collective bargaining: evidence from China
Abstract: During the strike wave of 2010, S provincial authority began to support trade unions in experimenting with workplace union elections and collective bargaining. Drawing data from union documents and ethnographic research, the variability in workplace collective bargaining in the context of official union reform in Y City in S Province is explained in this article. By comparing multiple enterprise union collective bargaining cases, four models of workplace collective bargaining in practice are identified in the research: moderated mobilization, technical negotiation, collective consultation, and managerial domination. Using the power resources approach to analyze collective bargaining, the author argues that the various practices result from the dynamic interactions between workers’ power configuration and employers’ perception of disruption. Furthermore, the author argues that the variability in workplace collective bargaining is not a transient phenomenon but a semi-institutionalized middle ground.
PubDate: 2022-11-24
DOI: 10.1186/s40711-022-00178-x
- Why are risk-sharing rules uncertain' A sociological study of local
financial governance
Abstract: This article discusses the uncertainty of risk-sharing rules in local financial governance. That is, when the formal risk-sharing rules of financial transactions are agreed upon in advance, actual operations are uncertain. First, the institutional contradiction at the macro-level is an important structural source of the uncertain rules at the micro-level. Second, institutional contradictions endow actors with conflicting bases of legitimacy and driving forces of interest, which induces games of norms and interests among investors, local governments, and intermediaries with regard to risk-sharing rules and leads to the competitive pattern of varied risk-sharing rules. Last, the combination of multiple legitimacy claims and multiple mechanisms of power competition leads to uncertainty in the risk-sharing rules of actual operations.
PubDate: 2022-11-11
DOI: 10.1186/s40711-022-00176-z
- Labor order under digital control: research on labor control of take-out
platform riders
Abstract: Following Marx’s analysis of technical control, this article studies the labor process of take-out riders from the perspectives of organizational and scientific technology. On the one hand, by redistributing control power, the platform system (software) and consumers replace the platform company (manager) to manage take-out riders. Although the platform company seems to have given up direct control over riders, it downplays the employer’s responsibility and transfers labor conflicts to the platform system and consumers. On the other hand, digital control has changed from physical machines and computer equipment to virtual software and data. The platform system makes labor order possible by subtly collecting and analyzing data from riders and using these data analysis results to manage them. Thus, digital control not only weakens riders’ willingness to resist and gradually reduces their autonomy but also “invites” them to participate in an implicit process of self-management. The control methods of capital change not only from autocracy to hegemony but also from physical to virtual.
PubDate: 2022-11-03
DOI: 10.1186/s40711-022-00171-4
- Bureaucratic control across enterprise boundaries: labor organization and
the control of the online car-hailing platforms
Abstract: This article shows that the online car-hailing platforms, supported by the digital technology of information matching, are more than some “flat” market organizations but are essentially bureaucratic organizations that are market-oriented and rely on business rules, digital technology, and third-party management institutions. By taking advantage of its monopolistic position, the car-hailing platform has built a bureaucratic control system with multilayer hierarchies in which various market players outside the enterprise participate. The platform first organizes production in a cooperative way by setting up external jobs, then guarantees that both drivers and leasing companies will follow the business rules and improve predictability. Finally, the platform uses digital technology and leasing companies to realize driver management and rule implementation.
PubDate: 2022-11-02
DOI: 10.1186/s40711-022-00174-1
- What makes Chinese rural migrants self-employed: a qualitative perspective
Abstract: This study scrutinizes the causes, configuration, and consequences of rural migrants’ motivations for becoming self-employed. It aims to solve two main problems in the current literature. The first is that previous studies primarily explain migrants’ self-employment through economic variables when other factors (e.g., autonomy, meaningfulness, and work environment) might be more important. Second, no study has been conducted to qualitatively understand migrants’ self-employment outcomes. By drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with rural-to-urban migrant workers conducted in four regions of China, this article provides insights into the pecuniary and nonpecuniary motivations of rural migrants’ employment decisions. Notably, it finds that most rural migrant workers in wage employment sectors are not in a position to exercise free choice regarding their working arrangements. In contrast, the prospect of achieving a higher level of income, greater autonomy, and more flexibility and freedom is important and attractive aspects of self-employment, with apparent gender differences. Nevertheless, migrants’ self-employment often involves self-sacrifice and economic and social marginalization. Therefore, it is unlikely that migrants select self-employment as an effective means for status acquisition.
PubDate: 2022-11-02
DOI: 10.1186/s40711-022-00175-0
- An analysis of cultural dissemination and national image construction in
Chinese influencer Li Ziqi’s vlogs and its impact on international
viewer perceptions on YouTube
Abstract: International social exchanges have always been important to China’s cultural soft power and image construction overseas. This study focuses on an internationally renowned mega influencer Li Ziqi and her vlogs on YouTube. These orchestrated vlogs tell stories of rural Chinese life and construct a desirable traditional Chinese rural culture for netizens at home and abroad. Informed by framing and cultivation theory, this study examines how user-generated content on national images can affect social media users’ perceptions of reality. Content analysis is used to analyze the visual portrayals of Chinese rural culture, including its customs and values, aesthetics, and cultural and scenic places in Li’s vlogs. Discourse analysis is further used to examine user comments and demonstrate her vlog content’s impact on user perceptions of Chinese rural culture. This study sheds light on how a complex and hybrid national image with ‘Chineseness,’ and a personal image with self-Orientalized and performed ‘soft but independent’ Chinese rural female image, is constructed by a social media influencer Li Ziqi with affective associations. At a conceptual and practical level, the findings of this study contribute to the ongoing scholarly discussions on how China engages with the globalized world through cultural diplomacy from the bottom-up, while existing research primarily takes a top-down approach.
PubDate: 2022-10-18
DOI: 10.1186/s40711-022-00173-2
- Global exposure: an alternative pathway to understanding cultural
omnivorousness in East Asian societies
Abstract: Previous studies on cultural taste build a class-omnivorousness framework. However, the conceptualization and measure of cultural omnivorousness are highly Western. To examine how cultural omnivorousness is shaped in non-Western societies, this study develops two dimensions of cultural omnivorousness and expands the meaning of social class from socioeconomic status to global exposure. Using data from the East Asian Social Survey, this study finds that the level of global exposure is significantly correlated with vertical cultural omnivorousness (i.e., the appreciation of both highbrow and lowbrow music) in China, Japan, and South Korea; however, the correlation between the level of global exposure and horizontal cultural omnivorousness (i.e., the appreciation of both transnational and traditional music) varies among the three countries. The findings show the diverse nature of cultural consumption in East Asia and challenge the Western discourse in the cultural sphere.
PubDate: 2022-09-16
DOI: 10.1186/s40711-022-00172-3
- “Competing personas”: aesthetic labor in the Chinese fitness
industry
Abstract: Given the proliferation of lifestyle consumption, industries such as the fields of fitness, fashion, and beauty and makeup have experienced rapid growth in terms of employment numbers, leading to fundamental challenges to working patterns. Based on ethnographic data concerning two fitness clubs in Shanghai collected over 13 months and 35 in-depth interviews with managers, fitness trainers, and customers, this article draws on the concept of aesthetic labor to examine how a “persona,” a combination of an ideal physique and a desirable personality in line with the aesthetic tastes of socioeconomically diverse clientele, is developed through the labor process of the fitness trainer. The author introduces the term “competing personas” to characterize shopfloor politics in the fitness industry. By understanding the process of packaging and selling their bodily, gendered, and affective resources as a “game,” fitness trainers draw symbolic boundaries to distinguish themselves from each other, thereby justifying their aesthetic competencies and self-identities. This article distinguishes three types of personas: advisor, friend, and idol, and these types are characterized by different corporeal and affective strategies. The article reveals how the exercise of agency by both male and female workers in the process of persona-building fuels the symbolic reproduction of class and gender inequalities by naturalizing the domination of an ostensibly legitimate taste.
PubDate: 2022-08-08
DOI: 10.1186/s40711-022-00166-1
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