20 March 2026, Volume 14 Issue 2

    

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  The Polysemy of“Computation”in Computational Social Science: An Analysis of Four Traditions

  社会学评论. 2026, 14(2): 5-31.

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  Computational social science has developed along four relatively independent trajectories of knowledge evolution: the axiomatic tradition, the descriptive tradition, the predictive tradition, and the experimental tradition. We analyze these four traditions across three dimensions: the relationship between theory and reality, pathways of entry into sociology, and methodological dilemmas. In doing so, we highlight the internal heterogeneity of computational social science while also examining and seeking to reconstruct its relationship with classical sociological research methods. This article calls for a shift in scholarly focus from the mere promotion of computational methods toward a more rigorous and cautious integration of three approaches.
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  Towards Agile Computational Grounded Theory: A Methodological Review, Reflection, and Research Practice

  社会学评论. 2026, 14(2): 32-54.

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  With the development of computational social science, computational grounded theory integrated with natural language processing has opened a new path for qualitative research; however, its application norms and boundaries remain contentious. Building on classical grounded theory, this paper develops an agile operational framework for computational grounded theory by integrating word vector dictionary expansion techniques. Taking the analysis of gender stereotypes in teacher charisma within student evaluation texts as a case, it explores the application optimization of this framework. Empirical results show that through a transparent and iterative computational process, this approach significantly improves analysis efficiency while preserving the interpretive depth of qualitative research, thereby achieving the integration of data-driven and theory-driven methodologies. This paradigm is text-centered, leverages researchers’theoretical sensitivity, and offers a research method that is agile, transparent, and capable of empirically testing theoretical hypotheses. Finally, this paper reflects on key methodological issues, aiming to provide a standardized and referable operational paradigm for social science text analysis in the era of big data.
  
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  The Contextual Effect of Cultural Reproduction:Income Inequality, Cultural Capital, and Adolescents’Academic Achievements

  社会学评论. 2026, 14(2): 55-75.

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  Based on a multi-level dataset constructed from the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and World Bank socio-economic indicators, this study adopts a comparative perspective to systematically examine how national (regional) income inequality moderates the heterogeneous effects of cultural capital on academic achievement across social strata. The findings reveal that: first, both objectified and embodied cultural capital yield higher educational returns for students from advantaged backgrounds, providing cross-national evidence for Bourdieu’s cultural reproduction theory; second, the heterogeneous effect of objectified cultural capital, namely the strength of reproduction, significantly strengthens as income inequality increases. In contrast, the heterogeneous effect of embodied cultural capital shows no significant structural variation across societies with different levels of inequality. These conclusions not only respond to Bourdieu’s proposition regarding the“context-dependent”nature of cultural capital but also offer new empirical insights at the macro level into the theoretical debate between cultural reproduction and cultural mobility.
  
  
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  Institutionalized Home-School Cooperation, Parental Involvement, and Youth Development: Evidence from the China Education Panel Survey

  社会学评论. 2026, 14(2): 76-99.

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  Using data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), this study investigates how institutionalized home-school cooperation measures influence levels of parental involvement at home and the developmental outcomes of adolescents. The findings reveal that, after controlling for background factors, school-initiated cooperation significantly enhances parental involvement. However, the effectiveness of these measures varies substantially by family socioeconomic status (SES). Families with higher SES are better positioned to deploy institutionalized resources, thereby reinforcing their level of involvement, while lower-SES families benefit to a much lesser extent. Moreover, institutionalized home-school cooperation shows no significant effect on adolescents’cognitive ability, social competence, or mental health. These results indicate that although such institutional measures help narrow school-level disparities in parental involvement, family SES remains a key determinant of parental involvement. The study highlights the dual role of institutionalized school measures in promoting educational equity from a neoinstitutionalist perspective.
  
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  Digital Literacy, Platforms, and the Distinction of Online Literature Reading Taste

  社会学评论. 2026, 14(2): 100-121.

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  Online literature represents a significant form of cultural consumption in the digital age. Readers have developed diverse online reading tastes. Digital literacy interacts with platforms’varied recommendation mechanisms through accessible scope, group co-construction, and gaming capabilities, influencing the formation and distinction of digital reading tastes. Readers with high digital literacy interact with platforms, developing exquisite digital reading tastes, whereas those with low digital literacy are shaped by platforms into plain digital reading tastes. Digital reading taste distinction is different from classical taste distinctions in formation, manifestation, and class relations, being more concealed and relatively entrenched. This paper elucidates the formation mechanisms of digital reading taste distinction and its differences from classical taste distinctions, thereby enriching the cultural dimension of research on digital social stratification.
  
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  Literati and Artists Marching Together: The Modernization of Old Operas from the Perspective of State-Art Relations

  社会学评论. 2026, 14(2): 122-148.

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  The frequent interactions between literati and artists constituted a distinctive phenomenon in the modernization process of old operas and served as an important pathway for the modernization of traditional art. During the Republic of China period, although literati began to“pay attention to”artists, due to the estrangement and ambiguity in the relationship between the state and art prevented the former from recognizing the unique value of the latter in the modernization of old operas, and the form of literary-artistic relationship was mainly characterized by “literati dominating, artists following”. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, guided by the literary and artistic policies of the Communist Party of China and supported by nationwide political power, the relationship between the state and art became clearly defined. Through a series of opera reform practices and policy adjustments, both sides in literature and art moved towards “literati and artists marching together”, namely they learned from and discovered each other, and dedicated themselves to the same goal of modernizing and instrumentalizing old operas. The emergence of“literati and artists in mutual accord”is an extension of the new democratic mass culture construction led by the CPC and an important achievement in socialist cultural development. This development not only signifies the creative transformation and innovative advancement of traditional operas, but also constitutes an important link in the adjustment of class relations and social integration, reflecting a state-art relationship with distinct Chinese characteristics.
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  Decentering Academic History: A Case Study of the Chicago School of Sociology

  社会学评论. 2026, 14(2): 149-170.

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  Traditional studies on the academic history of the Chicago School of Sociology have long been confined to a“centralized”perspective, focusing on the localized experiences of the University of Chicago and its core scholars while neglecting the dynamic reconstruction of the school’s ideas through global circulation. Adopting a“decentering”methodology, this paper transcends geographical and institutional boundaries to reveal the multi-temporal and spatial networks of the school’s knowledge production, using Canada and China as two illustrative case studies. Through an in-depth analysis of transnational intellectual exchanges between Canadian sociologists and the Chicago School, as well as an examination of how the Yenching School’s criminological research assimilated and transformed the Chicago School’s methodologies, this study demonstrates that the history of the school is not a static product confined to a single location or a handful of scholars. Instead, it is continuously shaped and reshaped through dynamic interactions between scholars’lived experiences and academic networks across multiple temporal and spatial contexts. This decentering approach not only enriches the historical narrative of the Chicago School of Sociology but also offers new theoretical and methodological insights for understanding the global dissemination and local adaptation of academic traditions.
  
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  The Unstable Triangles: Family and Kinship Relations in Customary Adoption Practices in Contemporary China

  社会学评论. 2026, 14(2): 171-194.

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  Lifting the Younger Generation into the City: Family Resilience and Inter-Generational Support in the Process of Population Urbanization

  社会学评论. 2026, 14(2): 195-214.

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  While existing research has examined urbanization primarily through the lenses of economies of scale, government behavior, urban-rural disparities, and the relationship between urbanization and households, this study takes Shanghai taxi drivers as a case to enter the lived world and inner world of the floating population, revealing the micro-mechanisms of China’s population urbanization process. Migrant taxi drivers in Shanghai are motivated to work in the city to support their children’s education, family formation, and home purchases in urban areas, demonstrating remarkable family resilience and intergenerational support. This characteristic stems from deep-rooted bonds within the family: first, the natural emotional attachment among family members; second, the sacred sense of family responsibility that emerges from this attachment; and third, the life continuity and family legacy that drive the entire family to unite around key urbanization tasks such as home buying, which also becomes an important source of individual life meaning. Within the existing urban-rural structural relations, family emotion, responsibility, and intergenerational inheritance collectively serve as a significant driving force of urbanization, reflecting a distinctly Chinese path to urbanization.
  
  
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  Actor-Network and Infrastructure Flexibility Construction:A Case Study on Central Heating Retrofitting in He County

  社会学评论. 2026, 14(2): 215-235.

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  This study focuses on the practice of urban centralized clean energy heating retrofitting, analyzing how the construction of an actor network enhances infrastructure flexibility throughout the process. Specifically, it examines three residential communities in the urban area of He County, Shanxi Province, that have undergone central heating retrofitting as illustrative cases. The study analyzes how human actors (such as community representatives, building managers, and village committees) and non-human actors (including heat exchange stations, householdlevel pipeline networks, and thermal insulation windows) interact to drive the bottomup stabilization of clean heating systems. The findings reveal that flexibility construction in infrastructure is not solely a technical upgrade but relies on a dynamic network integrating both human and non-human actors. This process achieves an alignment between standardized supply and diverse user demands through three pathways, namely connectivity, modularity, and compatibility. Infrastructure flexibility and actor-network mutually shape each other, forming a complex system of county-level clean energy heating.
  
  
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  Resource Logic and the“Model”Life Cycle: An Investigation and Reflection on the Border Residents’Mutual Trade Cooperatives in Zhendong County

  社会学评论. 2026, 14(2): 236-256.

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  “Setting up models”is an important meso-level institutional arrangement in China’s national governance mechanism. Most existing literature focuses on the first half of the life cycle of a model, that is, the process of“selection-shaping promotion”, while paying little attention to the second half, that is, the development or decline of the model. This paper constructs a“model paradox”framework, explaining that the life cycle of a model is influenced by the contrast between the trickle-down effect and the siphon effect, and builds a typology of“trickle-down models”and“siphon models”. Based on this, the paper further discusses the impact of learnability, operational costs, and the degree of legitimacy on various types of models. Based on an investigation of the border residents’mutual trade cooperatives in a certain border county, this paper uses the change of the type transformation of models to validate the theoretical framework of the“model paradox”. The dynamic interaction regarding resources between the creator of the model and models themselves offers valuable insights for the study of national governance mechanisms.