The social nature of time is a central theme in the sociology of time. Existing studies usually assume the synchronization and sharing of time standards,and rarely discuss the conditions and forms of synchronization. With synchronization referring to the nature of the sharing of time standards among different subjects, we can examine its multiple paths, levels,characteristics, scopes, and stability. In contrast to the un-synchronicity assumption of solipsists and the universal synchronization assumption of transcendentalist, sociological views on synchronization are constructive in nature. With respect to paths and methods of construction,synchronization can be categorized into three approaches: intersubjectivity, social convention, and ecology-event, which leads to three core issues. First, synchronization involves three levels: form synchronization, content synchronization, and encounter synchronization; second, it involves the scopes of individual, group, nation, and even the world; and third, different types of synchronization display differences in stability and their reproduction processes. Reflecting on synchronicity not only helps clarify core concepts in the sociology of time but also lays the groundwork for rethinking human existence and the rhythms of social time in the era of digital intelligence.

Understanding the formation of social inequality from the perspective of the labor market has long been a tradition in social stratification research in industrial societies, and contemporary Chinese social stratification research also follows this path, focusing on how socialist institutional arrangements, market transitions, and institutional changes influence social stratification through the opportunity structure of the labor market. However, with the rapid development of Chinese society, the diversification of opportunity structures has made the singular perspective of the labor market is insufficient to fully explain the complexity of social stratification in China. Taking the formation of housing inequality as an example, this paper reveals the limitations of the labor market perspective. Research shows that the impact of structural factors beyond the labor market on housing inequality even exceeds the impact of the labor market as a structural context. This paper argues that contemporary Chinese social stratification research should transcend the singular perspective of the labor market and adopt a multiple structural analytical approach, particularly focusing on the impact of structural factors outside the labor market, such as the real estate market, financial policies, and information technology, on the process of social inequality, so as to more accurately grasp the reality of social stratification in China and promote the theoretical development of social stratification research.

The rapid diffusion of digital technologies presents new opportunities to address the enduring challenge of weak community participation in urban governance in China. However, existing studies have largely focused on the instrumental affordances of technology, overlooking disparities in residents’digital competence.Drawing on survey data from 17 Chinese cities, this study adopts a perspective that centers on residents as active technology users to examine how digital competence influences community participation and through which mechanisms. The findings indicate that digital competence significantly enhances residents’participation in community affairs, primarily through two pathways: rebuilding community social networks by strengthening ties within online neighbourhood groups, and expanding informational spaces for public interaction on digital platforms. Moreover, digital competence exerts a pronounced activation effect on marginalized or previously disengaged residents, increasing their likelihood of civic involvement. This study contributes to the literature on digital empowerment and community governance by foregrounding user capacity over technological access and offers empirical support for building people-centred smart communities.

Embeddedness has long been regarded as the dominant research paradigm in economic sociology (as well as anthropology) and a core contribution of the field to economic studies. Despite its profound influence, the embeddedness paradigm has faced widespread criticism for its inability to further break through the explanatory framework of Western economics, leading to an ongoing crisis of disciplinary legitimacy for economic sociology. This paper examines three new research directions: relational work, performativity, and economization, emerging in economic sociology since the 21st century as the embeddedness paradigm encountered challenges. It analyzes how these approaches broaden the theoretical horizons of the embeddedness paradigm and explores their implications and significance for research in the Chinese context.

This study focuses on the evaluation of the overall social mobility in China. Using a quasi-experimental approach, we construct educational and income mobility beliefs measures and compared them with corresponding objective mobility indicators to accurately estimate patterns of perceptual bias. The comparison between subjective and objective indicators reveals the complexity of mobility belief biases: (1)Upward biased belief of absolute mobility, where people overestimate the likelihood of upward mobility from lower family background, particularly for educational mobility; (2)Upward biased belief of relative educational mobility, where people underestimate the intergenerational persistence of education status (subjective parent-child educational rank-rank correlation is lower than it’s parallel objective indicator); (3)Downward biased belief of relative income mobility, where people overestimate the intergenerational persistence of income status (subjective parent-child income rank-rank correlation is higher than it’s parallel objective indicator).Results from the multilevel linear model analysis further confirm that the aforementioned patterns of perceptual bias do not vary according to respondent characteristics and may therefore be widespread.

This article argues that Weber has fully discussed the issue of“human development”based on the religious concept of“asceticism”. He regarded asceticism as the key element of the formation of modern western personality, and clarified the significance of this personality for the construction of modern order,thus breaking through the general view of theologians and philosophers on asceticism at that time. Weber’s preference for asceticism led him to bring it into the study of comparative civilization, and then revealed the differences in personality types in different civilized orders, which also shaped different living orders. Based on this, Weber put forward the multi-causal civilization analysis path of“idea-personalityorder”, which constituted his“human science”. For Weber, the dilemma caused by the order created by man in turn controlling man can only be broken through by personality. The rational ascetic personality has completed its initial mission. After that, personality will be reborn in the struggle for the values of survival order.

This study uses the fictive kinship-based emotional labor of caregivers  at an eldercare service station in Beijing as an example to analyze how emotional labor generates positive experiences. The study finds that the process of emotional

The event of being left-behind has different long-lasting effects on the development of individual education. Analyzing the generation mechanism and subsequent changes of its effects can help enhance our understanding of the educational development process of those who have experienced being left behind. Based on autobiographies and in-depth interviews, the educational process of 20 rural post-80s youth with left-behind experience was retrospectively analyzed from the perspective of life course theory. Being left behind is an unstable early life state with insufficient educational support and significant individual differences. Its association with respondents’educational development trajectories can be cate‐ gorized into four types: positive cycle, crisis transformation, cumulative disadvan‐ tages, and chain reaction. Respondents’motivation to learn stems from internalizing the positive explanations of their parents’migration for work. External support from guardians, teachers, and friends serves as a sustaining force rather than the primary motivating factor in their educational development. In the current context of pri‐ oritizing rural elementary education to support rural revitalization and advocating for collaborative education among families, schools, and communities, enhancing leftbehind children’s positive perception of their parents’spatial absence and building a stable and positive educational support network in their early lives may contribute to high-quality education for rural left-behind children. 

Taking the oral memory of old fishermen in Lanhai town as a case, this paper is trying to answer how the Dual Emotional Memory Structure in the GreatCollective Era is possible. We found that both bitterness and happiness are shaped in emotional memory reconstruction. First, compared with the changing predicament in later life, memory of the food coupon make them easy to generate happiness, which warms themselves in the meantime. And then, the old fishermen who consider themselves dedicator has undergone a change from selfless to dedication-paying, which reflects their views on the changes in self-value evaluation since the reform and opening up, and the way they find the meaning of suffering life. The phenomenon of emotional integration shows that when society changes, people will seek the value connection to alleviate senselessness. The concept of affective integration reveals the connection between meaning-seeking and memory construction, and also contributes to understanding how people seek self-value when society changes.

Sociology and biology have long lived in isolation. The emergence of epigenetics enables social factors to re-enter biological explanatory frameworks. In response to the social turn in biology, social scientists have proposed to construct “social theory as a cognitive neuroscience”, while emotion studies have experienced an“affective turn”facilitated by neuroscientific insights. Nevertheless, the mainstream sociology of emotions remains predominantly anchored in the traditional assumption that emotions stem from reflective appraisal processes, thus inadequately incorporating recent discoveries from cognitive neuroscience. This paper identifies two significant challenges cognitive neuroscience poses to the sociology of emotions.First, neuroscientific evidence highlights the automatic and non-conscious nature of emotional processes, directly challenging the foundational premises of traditional cognitivism. Second, the conventional analytical frameworks of individualism and holism are insufficient for comprehending affective processes occurring below the level of the individual. This limitation necessitates the adoption of an“infra-in⁃dividualist”perspective, thereby unlocking the theoretical potential of concepts such as collective effervescence and interaction ritual chains. Consequently, the sociology of emotions urgently needs to transcend disciplinary boundaries by systematically integrating insights from biology and neuroscience to enhance its explanatory frameworks. Interdisciplinary dialogue must maintain critical reflexivity to prevent simplistic or reductionist appropriation of neuroscientific findings.

This article outlines the structure of the Chinese market of the arts,which is composed of“global-China,”“official-occupational,”and“institutional-folk”subsystems. First, the“global-China”subsystem shows the circulation of artworks and artists between the Chinese and global art markets. The cultural intermediaries and the meaning of“Chineseness”are key issues in these processes.Second, the“official-occupational”subsystem highlights the relative independence and coexistence of the government-led and occupational market-led art institutions.They collectively constitute the institutionalised art world in China. Third, folk artists, craftsmen, and self-taught artists maintain small-scale folk art communities. They are relatively independent of the institutionalised art worlds and develop various conventions of their own, which forms the“institutional-folk”subsystem. The article concludes by elaborating on this model’s empirical and theoretical applicability and inclusivity, summarising the historical transformation of the sub⁃systems, and discussing the prospect of the research on the Chinese market of the arts through a reflection on the meaning consciousness in the sociology of the arts.

This study examines the impact of marital power dynamics on household consumption using data from the China Family Panel Studies 2022. The results show that households in which women make spending decisions have significantly higher overall consumption levels than those where men make the decisions.In terms of spending categories, female decision-making notably increases basic survival-related expenditures such as food, clothing, and healthcare, while gender differences are not significant for developmental or major expenditures. The results suggest that women’s power in the household mainly influences everyday consumption. Further mechanism analysis reveals that household consumption increases even more when women make spending decisions and the gap in housework time between spouses is small. The findings highlight the role of marital power dynamics in shaping consumption and suggest that promoting gender equality and balanced domestic responsibilities can help stimulate household spending.

Traditional research on local social governance has evolved diverse analytical pathways, among which the“state⁃society”perspective and the“regional society”perspective constitute the two most contrasting and tension ⁃ filled orientations. From the first perspective, relevant research shows three paths：dual coexistence of national administrative control and local social governance, dualcompetition and dual integration. From the second perspective, relevant research presents the relationship between regional society and elite governance orientation, governance strategies, and organizational networks. This research context implies that the research content of local social governance has shifted from structure to actors, and from actors to action networks, and its research orientation has shifted from actors being limited by structure to actors dominating structure.

 This paper re-examines the meaning of“si”and its position in the differential mode of asscociation (chaxugeju) through a discussion of“si qin”(private kinship) and“si zun”(private respect) in mourning apparel studies. The study reveals that in Confucian social thoughts,“si”does not merely denote the self nor carry purely negative connotations. Rather, it signifies relationships of secondary importance that must yield when in conflict with core relationships. The counterpart of“si”is not“gong”(public), but rather the father-son relationship or“tongti” (corporal unity) relationship. The key criterion for determining whether a relationship is“si”lies in whether it is recognized as kin or accorded respect by the father. Relationships with parents and those sharing corporal unity with the father form the core and axis of the differential mode of association. The principles of kinship and respect, as well as the emotions of affection and reverence emanating from these relationships, constitute the true source of“extending from self to others.” 

This article uses synchronic accounting methods and extended participant observation to investigate the income and expenditure accounts of 13 selfemployed truck drivers engaged in road freight transportation in 2024. The research reveals that the labor of self-employed truck drivers is entrepreneurial labor, with a significant disparity between their freight charges and costs. Their income is a complex calculation process that is comprehensive, fluid, long-term, multi-category, and multi-level, jointly determined by multiple factors of freight charges and costs, and embedded in the labor context, business model, and market position of each truck driver. The account investigation brings the discussion of monetary earmarking and instrumental rationality back to the production and operation field, concluding that monetary earmarking is not only a rational process of clarifying the flow of money and surplus but also an irrational process of endowing subjective meanings and psychological feelings.

 In  the context of Chinese modernization, the downward flow of capital and the migration of farmers to cities have co-occurred, exerting a profound impact on rural social change. Based on fieldwork in Mi Village, Yunnan Province, this study takes peasant households as the core analytical unit to explore the logic of rural social structure transformation and ethical continuity from three dimensions: agricultural production, family life, and social interaction. The research proposes a “concentric-circle development model” of “action ethics-social structure-economic institutions”, revealing that family-oriented action ethics serve as an internal driving force, prompting the mutual adaptation between social transformation and the local value. This finding provides a micro-level perspective and empirical support for understanding the logic of urban-rural interaction and constructing an indigenous
development theory framework that breaks through the“traditional-modern” dichotomy.

Taking Chinese musicians in Germany as a case study, this paper proposes a theoretical model of the“mutual construction of conceptual structures and social relationships.”Due to their distinctive cultural characteristics, musicians inclined to adopt a Chinese style in their music production are more likely to build relationships with commercial and governmental institutions. Simultaneously, they internalize the concept of“popularized classical music”and become“crossover populist”musicians. Conversely, musicians who avoid Chinese stylistic elements are more likely to gain support from professional elites in academic settings, owing to their abstract and avant-garde styles. These musicians internalize the concept of “elitist classical music”and become“avant-garde elitist”musicians. This paper offers an analytical framework for understanding the mutual shaping processes between social relationships and conceptual structures, while also enriching the field of the sociology of art through a unique empirical case.

This paper employs the methodology of“laboratory studies”to examine the clinical construction of mental illness by analyzing physicians’diagnostic techniques, thereby proposing an alternative research approach distinct from tracing the historical formation and social consequences of diagnostic categories at the societal level. In the clinical process of transforming ambiguous, vague, or unknown somatic and psychological distress into clearly named and treatable mental disorders,standardized diagnostic tools, such as international diagnostic criteria, expert consensus, and assessment scales, interact with clinicians’technical operations and logic, including matching, translating, and noise reduction. Diagnosis is both a social act and a technical act. Analyzing diagnostic techniques aims to supplement existing discussions with the perspectives of physicians and clinical practices, thereby enriching the understanding of the social construction of mental illness.

Fei Xiaotong’s continuous thinking on why the“cooperative silk Factory”failed not only has a theoretical explanation, but also explains how to deal with the problem of modernity in China on the basis of the academic plan and thinking. The internal and external interweaving and mutual influence between market, society and custom constitute the three main fulcrum of Fei Xiaotong’s explanation of the failure of the“cooperative silk Factory”. The social structure behind the industrial organization was discussed by combining economy and society, which deepened the understanding of the failure of the“cooperative silk factory” during the period of Quige. Fei Xiaotong’s explanation of the failure of the “cooperative silk factory”is not only a dialogue and transcendence of the analysis of Delleren’s economic perspective, but also deepens the understanding of rural industry itself within the rural industrial school and expands the vision of the debate on China’s economic development path during the Republic of China. It also responds to the question of how to take a different path from Western modernity since the May Fourth Movement. With today’s“hindsight”, the process of reinterpreting the failure of the“cooperative silk factory”from the perspective of the transformation of peasant household wage labor unit, the different social nature of towns and villages and differentiated humanistic and ecological perspectives can prompt and explore new possibilities of the core question of modern Chinese society.

 Based on fieldwork in the fast fashion industry, this study describes and analyzes the collaboration among leading companies—represented by fast fashion brands—trading companies, and garment factories in production organization and labor control within a global production network“stitched”by orders. It has constructed a complex and de‐typified factory regime.The entire production network, rather than a single company, constructs workers’consent to the orders, rather than the game of making out based on piecework. The multi ‐level production network reinforces the despotic character of labor control. Trading companies externalize labor control from the direct point of production, further contributing to the atomization of workers. This study provides a more complete picture of labor control within global production networks.

Based on the data of the 2023 China Software Engineer Profession Survey, this paper takes three positions in the software industry, namely administrative staff, engineering development software engineers, and intelligent scientific research software engineers, where the degree of digital technology involvement increases successively, as the research objects, and conducts comparative analysis from three aspects: work flexibility, work team, and work cognition. By controlling and discussing the influence of ownership attributes of the work organization, this paper finds that the involvement of digital technology has brought about modular professional characteristics. Unlike the output standardization model of assembly line production, modular production is manifested as a function-oriented input standardization, which in turn forms a corresponding architecture-neutral target management model. 

Based on Fei Xiaotong’s early works and recently discovered archives from his student days, this article explores how Fei Xiaotong responded to the limitations of the functionalist paradigm in explaining social and cultural changes, and gradually formed a dualistic analytical perspective of“the tradition that functions”and“the external forces that trigger changes”. Starting from the relationship between tradition and external forces, based on the concept of“living history”, he transformed Malinowski’s“three-column approach”employed in African studies into a“four-column approach”that is more suitable for researching the changes in Chinese society. He applied the new approach to the analysis of the silk industry in Peasant Life in China and the Cocoon. This is Fei Xiaotong’s important exploration and theoretical consciousness of the modernization plan for Chinese society in his early years.

The sociology of knowledge undertakes a systematic examination of the relationship between knowledge and social existence, yet it has rarely explored the ways in which evolving social processes shape the transnational reception of knowledge. By analyzing how Inkeles and Foucault have been received in the knowledge production of Chinese sociology since its reconstruction, alongside the concurrent evolution of China’s modernization, three findings emerge. First, in terms of shifting scholarly influence, Inkeles, once prominent at the outset of sociology’s revival, has seen a gradual decline in visibility. At the same time, references to Foucault, initially little-known, have steadily increased. Second, from a societal perspective, the early fascination with and vision for modernization gave way to a focus on real-world challenges as social reforms and transformations deepened. Finally, a Granger causality analysis suggests that these social processes and the reception of theoretical ideas exert a sustained and long-term impact on each other. This dual-dynamic framework provides a new perspective for understanding how modernization shapes knowledge production and the circulation of theoretical paradigms.

 British anthropologist Max Gluckman’s 1962 reinterpretation of Arnold van Gennep’s concept of“rites of passage”marked a significant turning point in the history of modern anthropology. Through a comparative analysis of their texts, combined with an examination of their life trajectories, research methods, and socio-historical contexts, this article explores Gluckman’s critical reconstruction of van Gennep’s theory, especially focusing on their fundamental divergence on rites and social research. This article also addresses their use of fiction and imagination in their creative work, revealing their personal projections and reflections upon the academic system and the knowledge production. Moreover, this article aims to provide a path for rethinking disciplinary classics and the intellectual history behind them, emphasizing the importance of the recreation and reinterpretation of classical texts in contemporary academic traditions.

This paper examines the“big and small eaves”community within the Beichang unit of the Northeast Old Industrial Base, exploring how memory shapes the concept of community publicness through the influence on daily practices over a 70-year history. The research findings indicate that through the collaborative efforts of the state, enterprises, society, and the residents of Beichang, the“big and small eaves”production model has completed the practical transformation , evolving into a“memory field”. This memory field encompasses tangible forms of continuity, sacred symbolic meanings, and integrative functional transmission, enabling those embedded within it to achieve deep emotional connections and high spiritual res‐ onance. Consequently, fluid memories become established, coalesce, and resonate, thereby acquiring vitality that transcends personal limitations and achieving timelessness that transcends spatial and temporal boundaries.This paper holds that the governance of unit communities cannot sever the intrinsic connection between tradition and modernity. While connecting with history, it is even more important to respect the people’s memory, carrying and emotional expression, and to effectively stimulate the sense of community and actively recreate new publicness through memory resources.

This paper examines bottom-line exploration behavior during expost adjustments under incomplete contracts. Using an“interest-norm”dual game analytical framework, it investigates the mechanisms and strategies of contract participants who engage in game interactions under bounded rationality. Specifically, it explores how actors navigate scenarios where interests and norms are intertwined,leveraging signaling and strategic interactions to maximize cooperative gains. The study proposes that the respective bottom lines of cross-cultural contract participants are not common knowledge and are often subject to dynamic adjustments. Using a combination of sub-game models and field cases, the paper explores phenomena such as bottom-line breaches, differentiated bottom lines, and the transition among multiple bottom lines. It highlights the complexity of interactions and the importance of strategic choices in cross-cultural games. The research concludes that the dual game model has broad applicability to expost adjustments under incomplete contracts and offers theoretical insights for Chinese enterprises operating in complex overseas environments.

Patient compliance has always been considered a critical factor affecting the outcome of medical practice, and therefore, it attracts much attention from medical sociologists. Past research offers various explanations for why patients cannot always comply with medical instructions. This article first reviews the theoretical underpinnings of the value-laden concept of patient compliance, and points out the discrepancies between theory and practice in the scholarly discussion. Secondly, this article argues that we should understand compliance as objectoriented practice instead of the result of intersubjective power relations. That is, we should not treat patient compliance simply as manifestation of doctor-patient relationships, but understand it as“better”choices made by the patients when interacting with medical technologies. Furthermore, this article proposes to bring cultural sociology into the discussion to demostrate how medical technologies, as cultural objects, construct the“better”choices of the patients, emphasizing how both the materiality and symbolic aspects of the medical technologies, by interacting with both the bodily and cognitive capacities of humans, ultimately shape patient compliance. This article hopes to shed some theoretical light on how to push forward medical practices and reduce the suffering of the patients.

Evans⁃Pritchard’s Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande is a foundational text in anthropology and a landmark in the study of“how natives think”. By exploring Azande beliefs in witchcraft and magic, the work illuminates their causal reasoning in the face of misfortune. This article examines the significance and evolving value of Azande studies within shifting theoretical frameworks. Originally situated within the paradigms of functionalism and the Annales School,Evans⁃Pritchard’s ethnography has since been revisited through the lenses of the linguistic turn, the historical turn, reflexive approaches to ethnographic writing, the ethical turn, and the ontological turn. This paper argues for renewed attention to how Azande studies have been embraced, adapted, and recontextualized by successive theoretical currents in anthropology.The connection between magic and causality reveals the important laws governing the operation of non-western rationality and human thinking. People usually explain the changes in the world around them from the language, logic, and morality, they are most accustomed to, and this is a relatively underestimated aspect for Chinese Anthropology
to learn from.

Existing research on the impact of family structure on rural children’s educational development has primarily suffered from several limitations: an over⁃simplified treatment of parental absence, inadequate comparative analysis of the compensatory effects of grandparent co-residence, and insufficient attention to the transmission mechanisms involving offspring’s non-cognitive abilities. This study focuses on analyzing and comparing the effects and mechanisms through which family structure breakdown (due to parental divorce or death) and family structure separation (due to parental migration) influence the academic achievement of rural children. Based on data from the China Education Panel Survey, the findings reveal that both family structure breakdown and separation significantly negatively affect the academic achievement of rural children, with the negative effect of family structure breakdown being more pronounced. Co-residence with grandparents can buffer the adverse impact of family structure disruption on rural children’s academic achievement but offers limited compensatory effects for separated families. Non-cognitive abilities serve as an intermediary mechanism through which both family structure breakdown and separation affect academic achievement, though the specific pathways differ: family structure breakdown primarily influences academic achievement through emotional stability, whereas family structure separation mainly affects academic achievement through conscientiousness.

This paper explores the binary paradox between“knowledge”and“abstract systems”under the conditions of modernity, based on Giddens’structuration theory.On one hand, as the core component of practice, knowledge enhances individual agency; on the other hand, through the process of disembedding in“abstract systems”, knowledge strengthens the stability of social structures. However, the unequal distribution of knowledge and its dependence on expert systems restrict individuals’ reflective capacity to reconstruct social structures, forming a cognitively inaccessible domain of knowledge. In the era of artificial intelligence, special attention must be paid to the profound impact of knowledge and power relationships on social stability and change, so as to deepen the understanding of modern social structures and technological risks.

The transactional behaviors within the grassroots market are both market-driven and socially conditioned. This article, in combination with the case of tea purchasing in Hu Town, southern Sichuan Province, analyzes the transaction logics among different subjects within the market chain of“farmers-peddlers-tea factories”, and reveals how the grassroots market adapts to the open market system as an acquaintance market. Peddlers need to compete for the market scope through interpersonal interaction strategies, but this may soften the quality standards of transactions and clog the market chain. Consequently, they have to achieve risk control through flexible and open transaction strategies. It can be observed that the sociality of different links in the grassroots market chain varies, and forms different adaptive patterns with marketability. Only by balancing the relationship between sociality and marketability based on transaction scenarios can the elasticity of the market chain be maintained, and subsequently, a flexible and inclusive transaction order be constructed in the open market to adapt to the gradual changes in the production and life order of farmers.

The American linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir, active in the early 20th century, had developed the culture theory of the Boasian school partly through his aesthetic pursuits, in which“form”and“creativity”serve as keywords.Sapir’s culture theory should be understood in the context of his aesthetic pursuits and artistic practices. Moreover, the theories on the individual-culture dynamic of Sapir and Benedict should be compared in a nuanced manner, in relation to how they discuss form and creativity. Although cultural relativism promoted by the Boasian school has become common sense among anthropologists, notions of culture held by Sapir and Benedict, in some ways, contest the notion of cultural relativism held by Boas. Illuminating the theoretical legacy of the Boasian school contributes to shedding light on how American anthropology in the early 20th century embraced science and art for approaching the holism of human beings, which benefits the development of Chinese anthropology today.

Existing research emphasizes the importance of social foundations for understanding regional development, yet it primarily focuses on abstract dimension such as values and ethics, with insufficient analysis of their structural characteristics. This paper takes the development disparities between local and introduced industries in Shuxi County as a starting point, focusing on the specific characteristics of the county-level labor structure to explore the intrinsic relationship between labor attitudes and labor structure. The study finds that Shuxi County exhibits a dual industrial structure. Although local and introduced industries operate within the same county-level labor market, they differ significantly in terms of labor adaptation.Specifically, the accessibility and stability of child-generation, parent-generation,and grandparent-generation labor from the local population demonstrate inter⁃generational heterogeneity in relation to the two types of industries. The formation of this characteristic is closely linked to Shuxi County’s historical industrial development path and the family life cycles of rural households. Through an in-depth examination of the county’s labor structure characteristics, this study reveals an important dimension of the social foundations in central and western Chinese counties, thereby helping to clarify the difficulties, challenges, and potential pathways for county-level industrial development.

This paper reviews the fieldwork conducted in Beizhen over three decades ago and its key findings. From the perspective of economic sociology, it re-analyzes the origins and structures of local specialized luggage and bag markets, the institutional arrangements of“household factories”, the behavioral logic of “household workers”, and the role of the local government. Additionally, it points out the limitations of the original fieldwork and potential directions for further research. In the conclusion section, the paper discusses two approaches in economic sociology, the criteria for evaluating fieldwork data, the necessity of revisiting the research site, and the significance of theoretical reconstruction.

Drawing on the latest wave of the Social Attitudes Questionnaire of Urban and Rural Residents（2024）, this study employs latent profile analysis（LPA） to examine the multidimensional nature of stratification beliefs among young people.The findings identify four distinct belief patterns: strongly dual beliefs（45%）,moderately dual beliefs（35%）, predominantly meritocratic beliefs（16%）, and predominantly structural beliefs（4%）. Specifically, respondents holding dual beliefs recognize meritocratic（e. g., effort, ability）and structural factors（e. g., family background, social connections）as equally important for economic success. In contrast, respondents adhering to predominantly meritocratic beliefs emphasize the decisive role of meritocratic factors, whereas those with predominantly structural beliefs attribute economic success mainly to structural factors. Further analysis reveals that socioeconomic status significantly shapes belief patterns. Moreover, youth with different stratification beliefs exhibit systematic variations in their attitudes toward social economic development and other factors, with those holding predominantly structural beliefs expressing substantially more pessimistic views. These findings highlight the diverse ways in which young people perceive the social stratification system, providing fresh insights into the broader social mindset.

This paper based on a utility function that incorporates social factors, analyzes the impact of social games on the path dependence and lock-in breaking mechanisms in the application of technology.The analysis shows that under the condition of coexistence of old and new technologies, even if the new technology can bring an increase in material benefits to all parties in the game,due to the impact of relative status and interpersonal relationships on utility, the choice of new technology may not necessarily become the dominant strategy for all parties involved in the game, and the path dependence on old technology may still continue.The analysis also shows that relative status and interpersonal relationships are not always conservative forces that maintain the old technology path. Under certain conditions,they play an active role in breaking the lock-in during social games in technology applications.Combined with case analysis, the above characteristics exist in the internal social games of enterprises based on the choice of old and new technologies, in the handling of internal hierarchical relationships, and in the external market relationships of enterprises. This study contributes to the rational prediction of potential social barries in the application of new technologies.

This study establishes its foundation on four core dimensions—the view of righteousness and benefit, trust, entrepreneurial risk-taking propensity, and government-business culture—and attempts to construct a cultural explanatory framework for corporate philanthropy. Leveraging this framework and the survey data of Chinese private enterprises in 2014, this study examines how the culture of merchant guild influences the charitable donations of private enterprises. The key findings of the study are as follows: First, the overall traditional merchant guild culture exerts a significant positive driving effect on the private enterprise donation.Second, among the subdivided dimensions of merchant guild culture, enterprises affiliated with kinship-based merchant guilds donate more than those associated with geographically-based merchant guilds; meanwhile, enterprises rooted in riskpreferring merchant guilds donate more than those in risk-averse merchant guilds.Third, the positive effect of political connections on corporate donations does not exhibit significant differences due to variations in the government-business cultural attributes of different merchant guilds. This study reveals the positiveeffects of the strong relational trust culture of China’s merchant guilds, which differs significantly from that within the Western culture, and further highlights the institutional and cultural advantages that motivate private enterprise philanthropy.