Since the 1970s, Western industrialized societies have been transitioning to post-industrial societies, with economies gradually shifting from manufacturing to being dominated by service industries and the knowledge economy. During this
transition, the working class has gradually declined, while the number of professional and service industry workers has rapidly increased, resulting in a noticeable polarization in the labor market structure. However, the EGP class schema, constructed based on industrial society, has failed to capture the changes in the employment structure of post-industrial societies. Increasing numbers of women and non-manual routine workers cannot find appropriate class positions within the traditional class framework. To address this issue, Oesch proposed a concept of social stratification based on the work logic, categorizing classes according to whether daily work involves the use of professional skills, the exercise of organizational power, or the service of personal needs. This accurately reflects the diversity and complexity of employment structures in post-industrial societies. For China, which is transitioning to a post-industrial society, Oesch’s concept of social stratification can help us predict the future development trends of social stratification in China and provide strong support for the formulation of more scientific and reasonable social policies.

Distinct from traditional explanations based on self-interest and system justification theories, this paper explores the formation logic of meritocracy identification from a social context perspective, focusing on the roles of inequality and
the information media. By analyzing data from the China Family Panel Survey, we find that the higher the inequality in regions where individuals live, the more they identify with meritocracy. In addition, information media relying on Internet technology can significantly weaken the positive effect of inequality on meritocracy identification. Hence, this paper proposes the proposition“social contextuality of meritocracy identification”. On the one hand, inequality makes it difficult for individuals to perceive socio-economic status gaps with others by creating social contextual segregation, which leads to greater identification with meritocracy. On the other hand, using the Internet to access information can expand the social context
of individuals, thus updating their perceptions of meritocracy.

This paper reviews three theoretical research paths on how culture influences action in American cultural sociology: the value, toolbox, and cognitive paths. The values path attempts to explain how culture as a whole value system influences action through personality. Based on criticizing the values path, the toolbox path regards culture as a tool that can be readily accessed. It emphasizes the importance of action strategies between culture and action. The cognitive path is the criticism and transcendence of the first two paths. By absorbing the theoretical resources of cognitive psychology, this approach focuses on the“schema explanation”that combines both the superindividuality and the stereotypical representation of culture, and divides the process of how culture influences action into cultural acquisition, cultural sharing, and cultural activation. The discussion of the above three approaches is helpful for us to re-understand the concept of“view of knowledge and action”in Chinese cultural tradition and promote the construction of cultural sociology with Chinese characteristics.

Taking the agentic activity of the workers into consideration,we contend that despite operating under digital and organizational control, service platform couriers (SPCs) can still rely on their status as independent contractors and the
station system to spontaneously form team cooperation and strong ties during the labor process.These bonds, facilitated by the high integration of work settings and living environments under the station system, further extend into the economic and emotional aspects of the couriers’lives. The“situational strong ties”formed by SPCs are crucial for on-demand food delivery platforms to mobilize riders to meet their needs, and they are essential for maintaining the labor order in the platformbased food-delivery industry. Moreover, the“situational strong ties”forged by the couriers not only helped them to resist the atomization trend of digital workers, but also became a survival strategy for SPCs to protect themselves.

 The basic research topic of rural revitalization is how the external intervention force, through social mobilization, generates governance energy in rural society and gradually converges into a rural governance community. This article proposes an analytical framework of“differential mobilization”,which intends to characterize the theoretical and practical logic of the transformation of state intervention forces from external to internal and the reproduction of rural endogenous forces from internal to external in China’s social mobilization. Its core meaning is that external intervention forces promote the transformation of governance logic from one based on the generation of rural social community emotion by capable individuals to one by institutions in local contexts. The former is the local embedding by external intervention forces, which injects mobilization will into key persons and pushes outward through critical mass and gradually extends to radiating groups and then expanding groups, that is, from emotion, interest, reason to meaning (primary stage). The latter is the re-engineering of rural social community emotion by external intervention forces in the construction of institutional contexts, relying on mechanisms of interest expression and incentives, meaning perception, and emotional reproduction, that is, from reason, interest, emotion to meaning (advanced stage), to activate the endogenous driving force of rural social development.

With the advent of the digital-intelligence era, humanity has transitioned into a nascent digital existence paradigm characterized by human-computer interaction, communication, and even socialization. The data-mediated mode of interaction has catalyzed the formation of unprecedented social linkages between individuals and society; the Internet of Everything (IoE) is progressively manifesting an algorithmically driven characteristic known as ubiquitous solidarity. This“ubiquitous solidarity”, fueled by digital interactions and advanced computational capacities, fosters extensive connections within the digital society,manifesting in multifaceted and integrated transformations: from real humans
evolving into digital-intelligence entities, physical communities transitioning to virtual realms, industrial labor divisions giving way to digital-intelligence-driven labor configurations, and the real economy merging with the burgeoning digital economy. The information-processing actors, functioning as a bridge between the physical and digital environments, provide a pivotal linkage mechanism for integrating the real and virtual societal spheres. Ubiquitous solidarity thus represents a novel form of social cohesion, mirroring the algorithmically governed social structures and orders of our contemporary era.

The continuous transformation of digital technology has profoundly impacted on labor employment. Will this bring about changes in public attitudes towards welfare? This article is based on CSS data to test the impact and mechanism of digital occupational substitution risk on welfare attitudes. This research has found that, firstly, as the probability of digital occupational substitution increases, it increases workers’preference for government welfare responsibilities, increases their expectations for social security levels, and reduces their satisfaction with social security. Secondly, the risk of digital occupational substitution has an impact on welfare attitudes by increasing workers’expectations of unemployment risk and reducing their expectations of economic status. Thirdly, the impact of digital occupational substitution risk on welfare attitudes is heterogeneous among different economic and social status groups and employment types. Research suggests that social policy reform should focus on the welfare attitudes of workers in the digital age, and the government should strengthen risk management of social security, and increase investment in human capital.

This article aims to examine the influence of elite networks on the formation of subjective social status within the generational models. Drawing on data from the 2018 Chinese Private Enterprises Survey, the statistical results highlight
the gap between theoretical explanation and empirical evidence. This article employs agent-based modeling（ABM）. The ABM reveals that the disregard for elite connections during interactions significantly reduces the status recognition of private business owners and intensifies the polarization of their status identification, leading to a divergence between perceived status and objective economic position. Only when these owners maintain relatively high instrumental rationality does it have some mitigating effect. These findings highlight the interaction effect of social networks, contribute to the social network theory, and have important implications for understanding the subjective social status of private enterprises in contemporary China.

 This paper focuses on the labor processes of the workers on the food delivery and ridehailing platforms, and explores the formation mechanism of the platform labor time paradox. The findings reveal that platforms primarily extend workers’labor time through three mechanisms: performance evaluation, the unpaid and leisure-time utilization for management and training activities, and embedded incentive systems. On the one hand, platforms directly evaluate workers through platform rules and delegate monitoring and management tasks to third-party agencies. To meet these evaluations and regulatory requirements, platform workers are compelled to extend their online working hours and use their rest time for additional labor. On the other hand, platforms integrate incentive systems into the evaluation and reward-punishment frameworks, as well as order-dispatching algorithms, thereby stretching the flexible boundaries of workers’ ability to adjust their work schedules. Although the mechanisms for control⁃ ling labor time vary across different types of platforms, a commonality is that under platform control, workers cannot truly achieve flexibility during working hours or freedom after clocking out. Logging off does not equate to ending work.

The separation of officials and mandarins is an important personnel management system in ancient China. This system not only involves the division of labor between officials and mandarins in the administrative field but also affects the stratification of the two in the social and moral spheres. The existing functionalist sociology framework is insufficient to explain the uniqueness of the division of officials and mandarins. The study starts from the basic Confucian view that “emphasizes principles over tools (zhongqi qingdao)”and understands the political and moral exclusion of officials in traditional societies, explaining the increasing division between officials and mandarins. However, scholar-bureaucrats who believed that“a gentleman is not an implement (junzi buqi)”in their administrative routine highly relied on officials with professional skills and local knowledge. Hence, such separation of discourse and practice reflects the tension between Confucian moral concepts and rational administration. Based on this, the article proposes the proposition of“the Confucianization of bureaucracy”, emphasizing that Confucianism shaped the moral characteristics of the traditional bureaucracy that were different from the rational bureaucracy and ultimately influenced the direction of traditional state governance.

 Based on the method of explanation building and the concept of translation from actor-network theory（ANT）, this study develops a perspective of “translating needs”and uses it to analyze how social workers successfully resolved a petition case spanning 25 years. In response to the systematic and dynamic nature, hierarchical and practical aspects, and the constructive features of action inherent in needs, social workers implement“translating needs”through three steps: clarifying needs, identifying needs, and affirming needs. Through this process, petitioners’ goals gradually shift from seeking economic compensation to rebuilding their lives.Ultimately, the petitioner abandons ineffective petitions through the“reconciliation”ceremony of a multi-party joint meeting.“Translating needs”emerges as a key technique in professional intervention for petition cases, requiring social workers to differentiate between appeals and needs and pay particular attention to the fact that the petition process itself may generate new needs for petitioners.“Translating needs”underscores the experimental action intervention, thereby constructing the expected outcomes of successful actions by all parties and reinforcing the translation. In conclusion, this paper expands the concept of“translating needs”as an extension of ANT’s translation, detailing its development in four aspects.

This paper explores the significance of“methodological discomfort”in social science research and its potential to foster academic innovation. It begins by analyzing the evolution of the concept of discomfort, arguing that it is not merely an emotional response to academic challenges but also serves as a methodology that facilitates research breakthroughs. By examining the conflicts between the humanities and sciences, the paper emphasizes the necessity of using discomfort to return to the“social”aspect of social sciences. It argues that researchers should confront the complexity of research realities, reintroduce value⁃related attitudes and adopt a macro⁃level perspective in their studies. Finally, drawing on the theory of “creative destruction”, the paper suggests that researchers should exploit discomfort by identifying anomalies, embracing technological innovation and exploring the possibilities of paradigm integration. This approach aims to push social science research beyond its“comfort zone”, thereby fostering dynamic growth and progress.

The current discussion of “bullshit jobs” highlights the importance of research on“calling”.Calling aims to realize self-worth and altruism through work. From the perspective of structuration theory, based on a sample survey of Chinese urban residents, this paper explores how individuals change their calling through resource crafting and rule crafting under structural constraints. The results show that: On the one hand, there are significant differences in calling between occupational categories. Unskilled workers have a lower sense of calling, and the inherent work style of a occupation influences the sense of calling. People with low job income have a lower sense of calling. On the other hand, overeducated individuals have the characteristics of high efficiency and prosocial tendency, so they are more likely to actively craft jobs so as to enhance the sense of calling, The positive social impact of high-calling groups also helps to enhance the sense of calling of others. This article concludes that even if they encounter meaningless mundane work, they can still deeply cultivate their occupation to improve their chances, actively craft their jobs, and enhance their calling.

Theoretical self-consciousness is the core academic pursuit of Dr. Zheng Hangsheng, which presents his eager expectation for Chinese sociology construction and serves as the purpose of Sociological Review of China. Theoretical self-consciousness requires not only in-depth reflection on Chinese and foreign sociological theories but also effective theoretical support for the empirical study. With the latest trends of rapidly and largely becoming networking and digitization of social lives, network representation has become an essential part of network practice and network experiences. We should theoretically analyze and review the network representation and achieve a precise and broad representation self-consciousness.

The course of theoretical construction of Chinese modernization explored by Chinese sociologists represented by Zheng Hangsheng not only means a gradual process in which Chinese sociology is integrating itself into the global intellectual
community as well as making dialogues with it but also a process that Chinese sociology constructively reflects and criticizes Western theories, thus continuously strengthening theoretical consciousness and constructing an autonomous intellectual system of the sociology with Chinese characteristics. The fundamental approach of Zheng’s intellectual thoughts is based on two aspects: constructing of sociological theories with Chinese characteristics as his key concern and illuminating the modernization of China and the world through the lens of social transformation. Zheng’s intellectual thoughts crystallize the integration of Marxist dialectical materialism and historical materialism with the inclusive way of thinking about Chinese civilization. His crucial contributions to modernization theory mainly lie in the following aspects: breaking through the Western centrism myth of modernization theory, criticizing the premise assumptions and dualism thinking embedded within the Western modernization theory, replacing the teleological transition path with the transformation theory, and distilling specialized empirical theories into general ones.The diversities of modernization practices and social transformations in new emerging countries pose a fundamental challenge to Western modernization theory,which is also the crucial prerequisite for realizing the paradigm shift of modernization theory and promoting the theoretical construction of Chinese modernization.

China’s current governance goal of“equalizing basic public health services”relies on the input of substantial project funds, and the efficiency of their use is related to the organizational structure of the rural bureaucracy. Through a case comparison of two counties，this paper analyses how the different patterns of relationship between township-level and village-level health institutions affect policy implementation. The two models are constructed as“project-based linkage”and “quasi-bureaucratization”. The former is localized but malfunctions due to the uncontrollability of policy implementers. The latter is subject to the policy orientation of rural health system integration; still, it can only reduce services to administration due to the concentration of resources, failing to respond to the public. This paper adopts the historical view of institutional transformation, examines the effects and limits of bureaucratization as a historical strategy, and suggests that health system reform will not be“once and for all”，even under the trend of rationalizing grassroots governance. 

As a pioneer in the reconstruction of sociology in post-reform China,Zheng Hangsheng’s early studies in philosophy laid a dialectical and rational cognitive foundation for his later academic development. After the reform and opening-up, he closely integrated his academic research interests with the realities of society, transitioning from earlier philosophical research to sociology, which was being revived and rebuilt. From a historical and dialectical perspective, Zheng Hangsheng proposed two forms of sociological knowledge and constructed the representative theories of social operation and social transformation. At the same time, when reflecting on the relationship between the individual and society in the context of Western and Chinese modernities, he successively proposed locally distinctive theories of mutual construction and the theory of practical structure. Most importantly, in his later years, Zheng Hangsheng also devoted himself to planning the development of Chinese sociology as a discipline. He not only called on the academic community to cultivate theoretical self-awareness but also emphasized the importance of Chinese sociology’s academic discourse, aiming to provide a clear development path for Chinese sociology to step onto the world stage. Zheng Hangsheng’s academic journey can be seen as a dynamic process of continual creation, guided by his evolving methodological principles of knowledge production.

Neo-institutionalists argue that the extent to which nation-states are integrated into the‘world society’through institutional diffusion plays a crucial role in explaining cross-national variation in scientific achievements. However, existing studies fail to distinguish between scientific institutional isomorphism and actual scientific outcomes. This conflation has hindered the development of theoretical frameworks, overlooking factors that might confound or moderate the impact of institutional diffusion on actual scientific progress. This paper introduces state capacity as a key variable to refine the existing explanatory models. Using cross-national data, the study applies a mixed-effects model for empirical analysis. The findings suggest that state capacity acts as a confounding variable, leading to an overestimation of the effect of institutional diffusion when it is not properly ac⁃ counted for. The explanatory power of state capacity far exceeds that of institutional diffusion. While stronger state capacity may enhance the positive effects of integration into the world society, this interaction effect does not reach statistical significance. This study revisits prior research and provides a fresh perspective on the neo-institutional framework for scientific progress. It also addresses the shortage of macro-level quantitative cross-national studies in recent literature of neo-in⁃ stitutionalism and the sociology of science.

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.

Social order and social progress are the ultimate pursuits of sociology, as well as the value concern within the theory of practical structure. In modernization and globalization, how to understand the particularity and complexity of contemporary Chinese social practice has become a significant issue. The theory of practical structure proposed by Zheng Hangsheng and his academic team is precisely based on the process of globalization and localization, and it is a new perspective to understand the operation and development of contemporary society through the dual torsion of the long-wave process of modernity and the special pulsation of China’s social transformation. As a new development of sociology with Chinese characteristcs, the theory of practical structure systematically discusses the trends, characteristics, and dynamic changes of social transformation and social relations resulting from current changes in social structure through theoretical connotation, realistic foundation, and value concern. The analysis provides a potential research paradigm for understanding the driving force of the social structural transformation.

Fertility is an issue to which Durkheim attached great importance, while the academia of neither demography nor Durkheimian study has paid enough attention to it. This article sorts out Durkheim’s discourse on the issue of fertility systematically and finds his unique perspective regarding fertility as a moral phenomenon, which is replete with Durkheim’s concern for rebuilding social solidarity and moral order. For the problems of low fertility and out-of-wedlock fertility, he rejects the utilitarian approach and stresses that the explanations of low fertility should resort to moral factors, the most important of which is the rise of individualism, and that out-of-wedlock fertility derives from sexual anomie, which has to be corrected through the reconstruction of marital and sexual norms. Exploring Durkheim’s discourse on fertility helps deepen knowledge of his social thoughts, provides another perspective for the construction of demographic theory and also brings illumination to understanding the demographic situation in today’s China.

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.

Based on in-depth interviews and participatory observations with government departments across the country, this article takes the national integrated government service platform as an example to analyze the various links involved in its operation, including“information”,“coordination”,“supervision”, and“management”, revealing the changes brought by the platform organization to the national governance function. The platform organization enables the central government, which relied on local information in the past, to directly engage in dialogue with the public. Grassroots governments have transformed into“borrowing channels”and “demanding data”, reshaping the relationship between the central and local governments in the demand response process. The state has transformed the task of identifying and responding to social needs into a shared task for the government, platform enterprises, and the public through platform organizations, thereby connecting the“social synapse”with the“national center”,promoting resource sharing, and revitalizing unity. The internal and external supervision and evaluation formed around the platform organization not only allows the country to“see”society, but also enables the public to“see”the country more clearly. In the above process, the platform organization operates around the goal of“precision”,which has also become the main characteristic of platform organization operation management. This feature, along with the tension between local governance capacity and public demand, also constitutes a significant issue.

The practice of promoting the construction and the forging a strong sense of the Chinese national community in the new era puts forward requirements for Chinese philosophy and social sciences，and provides opportunities for their development. Zheng Hangsheng is an important promoter of the reconstruction of Chinese sociology and a pioneer of the theories of the School of Social Operation, whose studies and thoughts on ethnic groups and the nation, as well as the thought of theoretical self-consciousness of Chinese sociology that he advocated, have important inspiration and guiding significance for the study of the Chinese national community in the new era. Chinese sociologists should, with a high degree of theoretical self-awareness, utilize the advantages of sociology，expand their research horizons, and conduct in-depth studies on the issues of the Chinese national community with a view to achieving great accomplishments in the construction of sociological theories with Chinese characteristics and an independent knowledge system.

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.

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

郑杭生先生是改革开放新时期中国人民大学社会学学科的开创 者和奠基人、中国社会学学科恢复重建和繁荣发展的重要领导人，也是毕生 奉献于党的教育事业的杰出教育家。落其实者思其树，饮其流者怀其源。在 2024年11月9日召开的“自信·自觉·自主——纪念中国人民大学社会学学科 恢复重建40周年暨郑杭生先生逝世10周年”大会上，来自全国的学界同仁齐 聚一堂，系统回顾中国人民大学社会学学科恢复重建的光辉历程，深切缅怀 郑杭生先生的卓越贡献。历史越远越清晰。郑先生的崇高风范和不朽业绩， 当年只道是寻常，而今大家越发体会到先生开创事业之艰难、推进事业之坚 劲、成就事业之宏伟。在这里，编辑部将部分发言节录整理，按发言顺序，以 笔谈的形式集结发表，既是铭记过去、保存历史，更为启迪来者，共同开创学 科发展新的篇章。

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 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.” 

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. 

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.

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.

 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.