ISSN 2095-5154 CN 10-1098/C

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  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(1): 172-194.
     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.
  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(1): 53-75.
    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.
  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(1): 219-240.
    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.
  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(1): 195-218.
    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.
  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(1): 241-256.
     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.
  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(5): 121-144.
    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.

  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(1): 100-118.
    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.
  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(3): 5-26.
    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.
  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(3): 207-230.
    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.

  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(1): 145-171.
    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. 
  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(1): 119-144.
    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.
  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(1): 76-99.
    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.
  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(3): 96-116.
    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
    labor by caregivers includes surface acting such as forms of address and care, as well as deep acting involving rituals and relationships. The reason why fictive kinship-based emotional labor can generate positive experiences lies in caregivers achieving consistency between internal and external identification during the deep acting of emotional labor. This enables them to establish relationships with the elderly that transcend economic dimensions, thus transforming the eldercare service station into a“home away from home”for both themselves and the elderly through fictive kinship. The“consistency of identification”in the labor process is thus key to generating positive experiences in emotional labor. This study offers theoretical insights for reflecting on alienated labor under capitalism and provides practical implications for the development of the eldercare industry.
  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(1): 28-52.
    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.
  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(3): 53-73.
    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.
  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(3): 27-52.
    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.
  • YANG Jianghua YANG Siyu
    社会学评论. 2025, 13(4): 94-117.
    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.
  • LIU Ling WU Lei ZHANG Donghui
    社会学评论. 2025, 13(4): 160-181.
    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. 
  • ZHOU Feizhou KONG Xiangrui
    社会学评论. 2025, 13(4): 73-93.
     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.” 
  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(3): 74-95.
    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.
  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(3): 185-206.
    Drawing on in-depth interviews with 52 domestic workers, this study demonstrates that the interpersonal relationships between domestic workers and household employers are underpinned by a dynamic logic grounded in trust. These relationships are structured around a dynamically evolving trust-based logic, which unfolds within a complex, multidimensional framework shaped by the interrelationship of particularized trust, professional expertise, market transaction costs, and associated risks, as well as the institutionalized services offered by domestic service agencies. The nature of the employment relationship, along with the psychological contract it entails, shapes the interactional dynamics between domestic workers and household employers by influencing the mechanisms through which interpersonal trust is constructed. Occupational roles act as moderating variables influencing the effect of psychological contracts in maintaining interpersonal relationships. These psychological contracts delineate the boundaries of rights and obligations; when misaligned, these boundaries become intricately tied to the pricing mechanisms and structural supply-demand imbalances characterizing the domestic labor market.

  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(1): 5-27.
    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。
  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(3): 231-256.
    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.

  • HE Qifeng
    社会学评论. 2025, 13(4): 139-159.
     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.

  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(5): 5-32.
    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.

  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(3): 140-162.
    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.
  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(5): 210-234.
    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.

  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(3): 163-184.
    In recent years, environmental social work has shown rapid development,but issues such as unclear academic trajectory and conceptual confusion still persist.Compared to the reflective and anti-oppressive characteristics of Western environmental social work, China’s environmental social work primarily focuses on social development, aiming to provide practical support for promoting ecological civilization. In contrast to related concepts such as green social work and ecological social work, environmental social work is a model of social work based on a moderate view of environmental justice, striving for the sustainable development of human society.Under the backdrop of ecological civilization construction, environmental social work in China aims to establish a sustainable society where humans and nature coexist harmoniously. It focuses on mitigating the negative impact of production and daily life on the natural environment and adopts strategies such as advocacy, information integration, and knowledge extraction to promote ecological consciousness among multiple stakeholders, thereby stimulating the internal drive for environmental governance and green development.

  • LI Rongrong
    社会学评论. 2025, 13(4): 5-26.
    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.

  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(5): 33-54.
    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.

  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(3): 117-139.
    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.


  • MEI Xiao LIU Tianqi
    社会学评论. 2025, 13(4): 27-45.
    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.
  • YAN Zehua WANG Tianfu
    社会学评论. 2025, 13(4): 233-256.
    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. 
  • TAO Yu ​
    社会学评论. 2025, 13(4): 118-138.
    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.
  • WANG Guanyu ZHOU Gang ZHOU Xiaohong
    社会学评论. 2025, 13(4): 46-72.
    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.

  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(5): 186-209.
    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.


  • LI Xiaojuan ZHAO Wei
    社会学评论. 2025, 13(4): 182-205.
     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.

  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(5): 235-256.
    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.

  • LIU Youchi
    社会学评论. 2025, 13(4): 202-232.
    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.

  • 社会学评论. 2025, 13(5): 162-185.
    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.