Search

This research aimed to (1) study the current situation and existing problems of undergraduate students 'understanding of intangible cultural heritage, (2) develop a curriculum of intangible cultural heritage based on experiential learning theory, and (3) compare undergraduate students' understanding of intangible cultural heritage before and after teaching. The sample group was 50 students who were selected to attend the Intangible Cultural Heritage curriculum in the spring semester of 2023. The research tools were (1) Lesson plans (2) a Questionnaire on the current situation and existing problems of undergraduate students 'understanding of intangible cultural heritage, (3) an Interview form on the current situation and existing problems regarding students' understanding of intangible cultural heritage, (4) understanding intangible cultural heritage test, (5) Observation of Students' Behavior form, and (6) Interview form on opinions about teaching. This study was conducted in three steps: (1.) The study on the current situation and existing problems of undergraduate students 'understanding of intangible cultural heritage, (2.) The development of a curriculum of intangible cultural heritage based on experiential learning theory, and (3.) The experimental and improvement of curriculum. The results of the study showed that: 1) The current situation and existing problems of the intangible cultural heritage of college students have three aspects: students, teachers, and the school environment. The most important current situation and existing problems of undergraduate students 'understanding of intangible cultural heritage was the school environment aspects. 2) The Curriculum of intangible cultural heritage based on experiential learning theory includes 6 elements: Principle, Goal Contents, Learning process, Learning resource, and Evaluation. The learning process consisted of 4 steps: (1) Concrete Experience, (2) Reflective Observation, (3) Abstract Conceptualization, (4) Active Experimentation 3) The curriculum based on experiential learning theory can improve undergraduate students' understanding of intangible cultural heritage.

In the field of higher education, there are two dominant strands of interpretation of criticality, either as a decontextualized skill of logical reasoning, or a sense of action within larger contexts more than mere cognition. This research offers a reclaiming and reimagining of criticality in universities as an affective process, highlighting the entanglement of social, discursive and material perspectives. This research takes a comparative lens to investigate undergraduate students' perceptions of criticality and institutional cultivation of it in a Sociology undergraduate degree in China and the UK, adopting a qualitative interview method. Differences were found between cultures regarding the level of engagement with a range of criticality-embedded practices, including field work, critical inquiry in class, group work, etc. Through the development of criticality in various activities, students' feelings towards it shifted with contexts. While placed within physical and discursive universities that convey a sense of professionalism, students in the study acknowledged the importance of criticality and proactively demonstrated it. However, the feeling towards showcasing criticality outside campus was two-fold. Whereas criticality can be associated with negativity in social interactions, its value is appreciated as it enabled students to reconstruct their identities into a more rational, tolerant and caring one.

The number of international schools hit the 6,000-mark in 2012, and the 13,000-mark in 2022. In spite of continuous growth and diversity of provision, paradoxically some literature continues to paint a largely negative sociological imagination, associating the arena with micro-politics, high turnover, and increasing precarity. At the same time, the social reality of working in the arena remains under-reported and under-theorised. The largest number of international schools are now in China, where two-thirds are of the 'non-traditional' type. Our paper focuses on the experiences of two expatriate teachers in that relatively new field. In order to address the questions of 'how do teachers cope?', and 'what strategies do they adopt?', our paper delves into the under-reported social reality of 'cliques'. By adopting a 'positive sociology' lens of inquiry, we begin to address the role that cliques-formation might have in dealing with precarity and insecurity, especially that of 'friendship precarity' caused by constant transitions and short-term contracts. It can be seen that cliques offer a natural, quick, and practical solution to addressing precarity, helping over time to create resilience, and should not be viewed solely within a negative sociological imagination.

Doctoral education is often lauded as a site of academic socialization and research training for nascent scholars. However, discussions of socialization seldom problematize the dangers of intellectual imperialism and methodological nationalism inherent in doctoral researcher socialization. As such, the traditional socialization practices for doctoral students in the United States (U.S.) must be interrogated and expanded to move towards equitable practices for research, especially for students conducting international research. Using social and spatial positioning as our conceptual framing, we problematize and question current approaches and practices to doctoral researcher training in the U.S. We use the academic hood, which is granted upon successful completion of doctoral studies, as a metaphor to reconsider how to reflect upon and navigate power dynamics and knowledge production within the U.S. academy.

In this paper, we engage with Chinese diasporas research through recourse to Bourdieu's relational, reflexive sociology. We start with the historical and recent developments of Chinese diasporas research and point out the potential of using Bourdieu to strengthen the theoretical underpinnings of this research. While we see a steady stream of Bourdieu-informed Chinese diasporas studies and acknowledge their contribution and innovation, we observe that some studies use Bourdieu's capital and/or habitus without field. In response, we draw on Bourdieu's relationalism to highlight the significance of 'fielding' Chinese diasporas research. In addition, we turn field analysis onto Chinese diasporas researcher-selves through Bourdieu's reflexive tool of participant objectivation. In this vein, we ponder over the positions and position-takings of Chinese diasporas researchers within and beyond the academic field of Chinese diasporas. To conclude the paper, we make a call to shift the intellectual landscape by developing a research agenda to sociologise Chinese diasporas challenged by complex and difficult issues of power, politics, and participation. Our critical sociological approach may have implications for doing scholarship reflexively and relationally in other research fields.

Internationalization is an integral part of the strategies of leading Chinese universities to strive for world-class standing. It has left its marks on the academic life of China's social scientists. This article explores the impact of internationalization on the academic life of Chinese social scientists using Tsinghua University as an example. Emphasis is placed on the transformation of their academic life in the process of internationalization. Employing a qualitative case study method, this research draws on approximately two thirds of the faculty members in the Department of Sociology to present in-depth insights into the dynamics and ecosystems of their academic life. The findings show that internationalization promotes the adoption of internationalized criteria in faculty recruitment and promotion mechanisms, stimulates enthusiasm for international activities, and strengthens internationally oriented (largely North American) norms and practices in research, teaching, and discipline development. In discussing these dimensions, this article argues that Tsinghua social scientists experience both benefits and costs as the university works hard to pursue world-class status, echoing their peers in China's other top institutions of higher education.

Chinese scholars have not yet achieved consensus on the specific theories that should be part of a Chinese HRD theory base. A review of the Chinese HRD literature has identified four theory domains frequently mentioned as a possible foundation for the discipline: management, economics, sociology, and psychology/learning. Considering Swanson and Holton's (2009) argument that theory is important for any emergent discipline, the purpose of this paper is to help ignite the discussion on a theoretical foundation by going beyond the level of domains and proposing an initial core of theories for HRD in China. The proposed theories were chosen because of their fit with the four theory domains, with Deng Xiaoping's guidelines for the development of the Chinese economy and its human resources, and with the Chinese cultural context.

This paper investigates the transformation in the Zhou dynasty China (1046-256 BC) of the concept of education in relation to the process of social selection, which concerns the distribution both of knowledge and of social ranks. An approach in terms of historical semantics, mainly influenced by Luhmannian sociological theory with some reference to Koselleck, will place the focus on social change and the changing meaning of concepts. The analysed sources include archaeological evidence and passages from traditional classics. The paper will show how the semantics of education were closely tied to the changing principles of social selection and the changing Chinese cultural concept of "Tian" (Heaven).

In China, the philosophy of science and technology (PST) is derived from "Dialectics of Nature" (DN), which is based on Engels' unfinished book "Dialektik der Natur." DN as a political ideology provides political guidance for scientists and engineers. Therefore, since 1981, "Introduction to Dialectics of Nature" (IDN) has been an obligatory course for master's degree students who study natural science or technology. In 1987, DN was renamed PST by the Chinese government in order to communicate and do research. The IDN teachers constitute most of the scholars who research PST. Nowadays, in China, PST includes philosophy of nature, philosophy of science, philosophy of technology, sociology of science, sociology of technology, "science, technology and society," history of science, history of technology, management of science, and management of technology due to having too many IDN teachers. In fact, it is neither a branch of philosophy, nor a subject. The number of the IDN teachers has been increasing since 1981, which makes PST a miscellaneous collection of many branches or subjects. Finally, PST is facing two new challenges: the reduction of IDN and academic corruption.

This article documents the experiences of two American professors who have taught in China and describes the similarities and differences between their students at home and abroad. Brian Coppola, who taught organic chemistry at Peking University (PKU), observes how the strengths in science preparation that Chinese students achieve in their precollege schooling are not exploited at the university, while the structure of US higher education seems to make up for the weaker preparation of US students relative to their Chinese counterparts. Keith Kerr taught sociology at Ningxia University, which is located in an isolated region of northwest China. He describes how Chinese students, who in some ways appear strikingly similar to their American counterparts, also reflect the distinctly communal and traditional aspects of their culture. (Contains 1 table and a list of resources.)

Purpose: This paper aims to discuss the challenge for the classical idea of professionalism in understanding the Chinese software engineering industry after giving a close insight into the development of this industry as well as individual engineers with a psycho-societal perspective. Design/methodology/approach: The study starts with the general review of the sociological concept of profession, professional and specialization of knowledge. Together with revealing the critical challenge from the empirical field of software engineering industry regarding its professionalization, a critique of the neglect of subjective agency in classical conception of professionalism in sociology theory and methodology is set out. Findings: A case study with interpretation of the subject's continuously developing identification with their specialization in knowledge and occupation from their narration of career experience reveals the dynamics in this development process relating to individual, social practice and societal factors. Originality/value: This paper contributes to empirical research of analyzing the professionalization process of software engineering and software engineers in relation to the concept of professionalism, and it contributes theoretically by discussing the challenge of this process to the development of professionalism within this highly knowledge-based industry in a Chinese societal context. (Contains 6 figures and 2 notes.)

Through the in-depth analysis of the features of Huabei rural industrialization, the unique factory regime in Baigou, Hebei, and the resulting special workers, this paper reveals two dilemmas the migrant workers in Baigou and larger Hubei area face: Because of the interpersonal network of labor market, personalized trade, familial labor process, and patrimonial management, the workers are unable to become either industrial working class or citizens. Facing this special group of workers, we still believe in their power of self-liberation. Drawing on Touraine's action sociology and sociological intervention, and Burawoy's public sociology and praxis-oriented research, we modify "sociological intervention" according to the reality of Chinese society and propose the methodology of "strong sociological intervention" whose vehicle is "Baigou Migrant Worker Night School." The night school provided workers with courses of labor law, English, and computer based on their actual needs. Labor law is the core to evoke the self-consciousness of the workers. Through communications in the night school and workers' real living circumstances, we collected their true information and treated it as the source of sociological knowledge. After three sessions of night school training, workers showed changes in skills, social, and psychological aspects, laying a foundation for the growth of self-consciousness.

Interviews students who were involved with the 1989 Beijing student movement. Finds that the spatial concentration of students on Beijing university campuses nurtured many close-knit social networks and exposed students to environmental influences promoting social action; these conditions helped sustain the student movement and guided its choice of strategies. (DSK)

Describes the development of a college-level Chinese history course based on the biographies of notable Chinese. Suggests story telling to make history more understandable and authentic. Argues that narrative can provide an open window for the study of any society. (CFR)

States that intractable problems' many of which were specific to increasing specialization within individual disciplines, accompanied knowledge expansion in the West. Suggests interdisciplinary training as a solution to fragmentation. Points out that Chinese scholars have not seen specialization as a problem, and contends that they should consider integrating knowledge. (NL)

Explores the concept of good teaching in universities worldwide by interviewing professors and exchange students from USSR, England, Spain, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, Turkey, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan. Finds that teaching receives low priority in elite institutions while universities with open access consider good teaching important. (KO)

This article examines how lesbians and gay men imagine and build their 'intimate networks of care' and negotiate moral expectations towards intergenerational family care as they age. To date, little is known about the strength and complexities of different intimate ties or the role of intergenerational dynamics in shaping ageing sexual minority people's care needs and choices. Based on narrative interviews with ageing Chinese lesbians and gay men, the findings reveal their experiences of constantly juggling their ties with families of origin, moral values around intergenerational care and the urge to receive support from and offer support to chosen networks of people. Participants exercised agency in expanding their networks of care by building friendship and (online and offline) community networks for mutual care and support in later life. Nevertheless, as evidenced by the centrality of ageing with(out) children, and the moral obligation of caring for parents in participants' narratives, participants experienced tensions between enacting what was considered morally right/wrong and developing networks of care that were perceived as emotionally intimate. Linking relational sociology with the sociology of morality, we discuss the conceptual utility of 'intimate networks of care' for sociological theorising of the linkages between sexuality, care and relational lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Translational Sociology--Interdisciplinary Politics and Society by Esperança Bielsa in 2023 has aroused our great interest, as the title has explicitly indicated a further fulfillment and development of Translational Sociology from the perspective of interdisciplinary politics and society. The recent decade witnesses how Translational Sociology is well-received in China, the further exploration of translation and society, translation and politics, translation and experience in this book enables more teachers, researchers, and postgraduates in translation study to be fully aware of the diversity, complexity, and modernity of translation as a social practice. Moreover, by reinforcing the core role of translation in mediating language differences in all aspects of social life, questioning simplistic views of cultural homogenization, probing into the identity and transformation, politics and democracy, and the nature of modern experience in translating, this book updates our comprehension of the global characteristics of contemporary society from the perspective of translation study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore the rapid development of digital technology and its profound impact on human behavior and social functioning and to study the mechanisms by which digital technology and the social environment interact, a new branch of sociology—digital sociology—has emerged and rapidly entered a stage of vigorous development. This article briefly introduces digital sociology and outlines the research progress of digital sociology in six areas: labor economy and production, digital politics and power, social relations and interaction, body and self, social inequality, and methodological innovation. Based on this, the article compares digital sociology research in China and the West. The rapid development of digital technology in China provides a superb opportunity for sociology, and digital sociology has great potential for development in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the first ethnographic account of Foxconn in Zhengzhou—the world's largest iPhone manufacturing base—this paper argues that a new labor regime features 'hegemonic precarity' has arisen since capital's move to inland China. Despite being offered formal contracts with long-term benefits, inland Foxconn workers choose a more precarious employment status. I argue that this surprising pattern is a result of the interaction between dynamics at the point of production and that of social reproduction. Through the mechanism of 'hoarding of time', Foxconn's management pays relatively high wages to a minority of workers while keeping the majority's wages minimal. Meanwhile, changing dynamics in the realm of social reproduction makes Foxconn workers, especially women with children, constantly struggle between work and the family. Working together, these factors have led to extremely high turnover rates, bleak prospects for labor solidarity, and the rise of 'gig manufacturing' in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the large number of working-class students having to work while attending schools, their work experience and the potential of class solidarity have been largely unaddressed. By bringing in a social psychological perspective, this article revives the sociological debates of working-class solidarity and challenges the defeatist view of solidarity since the neoliberal turn of the global economy. This article comprises two studies. In Study 1, a working-class solidarity measure (WCSM) was developed through interviews, followed by factor-analysis of a vocational school sample in China (n = 509). In Study 2, we validated the factor structure of the WCSM and adopted structural equation modelling to show that prosocial behaviour positively predicted solidarity among vocational school students (n = 2534). Contrary to the understanding that the working-class is divisive and fragmentary, our work shows that working-class solidarity can be built and consolidated through layers of prosocial behaviours by students with work experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of how and why women committed crimes was a topic of hot debate in 1930s Republican China. Although men sociologists during this period largely framed the origins of both men's and women's crime as a social issue, they nonetheless still seriously considered biological and physiological factors in women's motivation for crime. At the same time, women sociologists who authored the two most comprehensive 1930s studies on women's crime – Zhou Shuzhao and research team Liu Qingyu and Xu Huifang – pushed back on the connections between biology and physiology in relation to crime for both women and men. Instead, they argued unconditionally for the social causes of all crime and particular social challenges for Chinese women. Their methodologies and frameworks were especially influenced by work from the Chicago school of sociology, a department which itself produced a number of prominent women social scientists. This article traces the transnational conversation on women's crime in Republican China through the work of U.S. sociologists who were cited by Zhou, Liu, and Xu; research by Chinese men sociologists, especially prominent sociologist Yan Jingyue; and finally, Zhou, Liu, and Xu's own rebuttals, conclusions, and contributions in developing a theory of Chinese women's crime. By also comparing the work of Chinese and U.S. women social scientists, this article argues that both groups pushed back, with varying strategies, on their men colleagues' inordinate focus on criminalized women's biology and physiology. In this way, both Chinese and U.S. women social scientists spoke into a largely male-dominated conversation and provided novel theories of women's crime as women themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focused on the macrosocial orientation of frontline social workers to develop an integrated model for professional identity. We used a nationally representative sample of 3069 frontline social workers in China and conducted confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, bootstrapping mediation, and multiple-group moderation analyses. The results show that cynicism and job characteristics, as a causal chain, serially mediated the relationship between macrosocial orientation and professional identity, and those relationships varied depending on the following three factors: social work education, licensing, and workplace setting. The findings have theoretical and practical implications for how frontline social workers form professional identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Berliner Journal für Soziologie is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Long-term electricity consumption forecasting has been a hot issue due to its importance in power systems planning. Recently, system dynamics (SD) have been considered a potential method for electricity consumption forecasting. However, traditional SD methods are failed in forecasting future power systems toward low-carbon, due to the complex influencing factors and the simple SD model structure. In this study, a novel method combining SD and the ImPACT equation is proposed to solve the above problem. First, a new influencing factor system including emerging factors is established to consider the development of future power system. Subsequently, the ImPACT equation is employed to decompose the electricity consumption into four subsystems. By doing this, the linkage between factors and electricity consumption can be better revealed, which helps to improve the forecasting accuracy. Next, models for quantifying the correlation between subsystems and factors are established using SD. Finally, the proposed method is verified by forecasting the power consumption of China in the future year 2030 to 2050. Furthermore, various scenarios are set to analyze the changing trend of future power consumption by different influencing factors. The results of this article can provide important basic information for power supply and power grid planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review provides a critical exploration of four key books in sociology of homosexuality published in mainland China since 2000, namely Wei Wei's Going Public (2012), Queering Chinese Society (2015), Xiaoxing Fu's Space, Culture and Performance (2012), and Qingfeng Wang's Homosexuality Studies (2017). We identify three important themes from the books: space, family, and identity. Based on this, we demonstrate two characteristics of the sociology of homosexuality in twenty-first-century China, with its focus on the theoretical potentials of the Chinese case and its combination of sociological perspectives and multidisciplinary approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The living environment is of vital importance to human beings and is also the basis for their survival and development. Along with the accumulation of people's production and living experience, people are seeking their own development while studying the living environment more deeply. In recent years, various regions and departments have conscientiously implemented the relevant decisions and deployments. They have promoted the construction of rural infrastructure and the equalisation of basic public services between urban and rural areas, so that the rural living environment can be gradually improved. The rapid development of urban-rural integration has brought great opportunities and challenges for rural development, making rural development issues increasingly complex and affecting the effectiveness of the construction of a new rural habitat. At the same time, the agricultural economy is the basis of national economic development, and the ecological environment provides a certain amount of material environment for the development of the agricultural economy. Therefore, research on the harmonious development of the agricultural economy and the ecological environment has always been a hot issue for the authorities concerned. After all, China's agricultural economic development mode is characterized by a rough-and-ready approach, and the agroecological environment continues to deteriorate, leaving the issue of sustainable agricultural development to be resolved. What is worse, in the practice of agricultural production, the related agricultural activities have brought serious pollution to the environment. Specifically, the carrying capacity of the agricultural ecological environment is declining, leading to an increasingly serious conflict between sustainable agricultural economic development and the construction of an environmentally friendly and resource-saving society. In China, although the industrialization process is accelerating, the agricultural population still accounts for a large proportion of the population. As people's living standards continue to improve, a favorable living environment has become an urgent need for farmers. As a result, strengthening the construction of rural infrastructure, improving rural living conditions, and improving rural environmental sanitation are important issues that need to be addressed urgently. Therefore, to further investigate the impact of environmental regulation and agricultural economic efficiency on the habitat, this study constructs a systematic GMM model using panel data for 30 provinces and regions in China from 2011 to 2021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In proposing a new conceptual framework that systematises and comprehends the complex dynamics of cultural heritage politics in China, the study takes its inspiration from Chinese scholars who have explored the relevance of Guanxi beyond its immediate business context. While current discourse theory acknowledges that heritage-making entails complex relationships that structure this making, there is as yet no systematic theoretical account of how these relationships co-exist, mediate and transform heritage-making. In developing a relational sociological framework based on the work of John Dewey, the analysis of digital heritage-making includes a case study of Nüshu, the dominant language and culture in villages on the southwestern frontier of China's Hunan Province. Using netnography, the study analyses a range of online accounts and websites that form part of the heritage-making process. Drawing on rich digital material that includes online competitions, virtual conversations or comments and digital certificates, the findings highlight the need for a more dynamic relational perspective that acknowledges the mutuality of heritage producers and the process of heritage-making. The findings contribute to a sociological account of heritage-making in China and to a more generalist theory of relational sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the premise of emphasizing interdisciplinary learning and reference, the sociology of sports course from an interdisciplinary perspective needs to trace the historical trajectory of the interactive development of the sociology of sports course and other disciplines and grasp the law of the cross-development of the sociology of sports course and other disciplines. This study uses an interdisciplinary approach to demonstrate the need for interdisciplinary research in sports science in China, based on the overall concept of complexity of sports, completeness of sports science, the intersection of sports science research, and interdisciplinary needs of sports scientific research innovation. The innovation ability is taken as the research object, and the important influencing aspects of sports scientific research innovation ability are investigated. An index system of sports scientific research innovation ability is developed, and qualitative research is applied to examine the impact of interdisciplinary research on sports scientific research innovation. The impact of ability is exposed by quantitative analysis to explore the association between the relevant factors in scientific research innovation ability and carefully understand the important role of interdisciplinary research in Chinese sports scientific research innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a Chinese notion, dongshi, to understand Chinese rural students' academic success in terms of accessing elite universities. Dongshi is defined as reflexive habitus informed by Bourdieu's notions of field, capital and habitus. Through a qualitative study of a group of rural students' pre-university life stories, dongshi emerges from the data, which alludes to four facets of reflexivity: (1) empathetic understanding of their parents' hardships in supporting their education; (2) their parents' powerlessness in educational involvement; (3) the significance of knowledge in changing destinies; and (4) expectations of repaying their parents. As reflexive habitus, dongshi echoes the transformative aspect of habitus, contributing to rural students' access to elite universities. This article contributes to the constructive dialogue with Bourdieu in Chinese sociology of education and calls for global researchers to reflect on the theoretical resources available in their linguistic repertoire when contextualising Bourdieu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of ongoing efforts to contain the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, understanding the role of asymptomatic patients in the transmission system is essential for infection control. However, the optimal approach to risk assessment and management of asymptomatic cases remains unclear. This study proposed a Susceptible, Exposed, Infectious, No symptoms, Hospitalized and reported, Recovered, Death (SEINRHD) epidemic propagation model. The model was constructed based on epidemiological characteristics of COVID-19 in China and accounting for the heterogeneity of social contact networks. The early community outbreaks in Wuhan were reconstructed and fitted with the actual data. We used this model to assess epidemic control measures for asymptomatic cases in three dimensions. The impact of asymptomatic cases on epidemic propagation was examined based on the effective reproduction number, abnormally high transmission events, and type and structure of transmission. Management of asymptomatic cases can help flatten the infection curve. Tracing 75% of the asymptomatic cases corresponds to a 32.5% overall reduction in new cases (compared with tracing no asymptomatic cases). Regardless of population-wide measures, household transmission is higher than other types of transmission, accounting for an estimated 50% of all cases. The magnitude of tracing of asymptomatic cases is more important than the timing; when all symptomatic patients were traced, tested, and isolated in a timely manner, the overall epidemic was not sensitive to the time of implementing the measures to trace asymptomatic patients. Disease control and prevention within families should be emphasized during an epidemic. Note to Practitioners—This article addresses the urgent need to assess the risk of another COVID-19 outbreak caused by asymptomatic cases and to find the optimal, most practical approach to asymptomatic case management. Previous studies mostly focused on the clinical and statistical characteristics of asymptomatic cases; few have evaluated the impact of asymptomatic case measures using mathematical modeling at the community scale. This study proposed a Susceptible, Exposed, Infectious, No symptoms, Hospitalized and reported, Recovered, Death (SEINRHD) propagation model based on local community structures and social contact networks, according to the development characteristics and trend of COVID-19 in a Chinese community. The conclusion provides theoretical support for emergency work of relevant departments in different periods of an epidemic. In the early stages of the epidemic, timely detection and isolation of symptomatic patients should be a priority. Where there are surplus resources for epidemic prevention, the authorities should consider increasing the proportion of asymptomatic patients being traced. Epidemic prevention measures among family members should be a primary focus of attention. This combination of strategies can help reduce the rate of viral transmission and result in extinguishing the epidemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic dependency theory has attracted increasing attention in academia in the last two decades, especially during the last decade. Syed Farid Alatas, a Singapore‐Malaysia based sociologist, has contributed significantly to the popularization of the idea of academic dependency through theorizing and foregrounding the conditions of dependency in Western‐dominated knowledge production and the global division of academic labor. The growing importance of this idea as applied in Asian contexts is however inseparable from the reconfiguration of the world‐systems in which Asia and especially China have achieved great advancement economically and otherwise. In line with this transformation, we have seen an enhanced effort in Asia and the Global South towards decolonization and indigenization in educational and academic domains. We have therefore organized this special issue to engage critically with Alatas's theory and to rethink the status quo of dependency, decolonization and indigenization in Asia, particularly East Asia, in response to a new development in global and local higher education and research. To close our discussion, we call for an action‐based initiative to address and transform the circumstances of dependency and for more genuine global collaborations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The indigenization of sociology has been an issue of considerable controversy in China. Rather than taking a side in the debate itself, this article intends to make sense of different perspectives in the debate. Utilizing Bourdieu's field theory, it links a sociologist's view on indigenization with the sociologist's position within China's sociological field. This article traces the history of the indigenization debate in China and proposes a theoretical model based on Bourdieu's insight. It then analyzes how the different combinations of academic and political capital shape the different positions on indigenization and how such a debate can be viewed as a symbolic struggle in the intellectual field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, trans medicine has increasingly shifted towards gender-affirming care, focusing on assisting transgender people in finding safe and effective ways to support their gender identity. Through standards of care, clinical guidelines, and classification systems, international experts have established global norms with profound downstream implications. However, how local providers respond to these new norms remains underexplored. Drawing on ethnographic work in clinical settings, conferences, and 30 in-depth interviews with healthcare providers, I argue that family-centered gender-affirming care has emerged in China as providers strive to balance global ideals of "good" trans medicine with the constraints of the local healthcare system. While international standards assist providers in adopting a less pathologizing and binary view of care, they provide limited practical guidance for navigating local social and institutional challenges. Faced with a lack of legal and institutional support, providers increasingly rely on family members' involvement to mitigate medical dispute risks. This reliance manifests in two forms: restrictive gatekeeping , where care is delayed or denied based on family members' attitudes and providers' assessment of transgender adults' ability to lead a "normal life," and affective gatekeeping , where providers use psychological support and gender diversity education to involve family members as caregivers. These findings enrich sociological studies in global health by illustrating how the interactions between global norms and local healthcare systems can both alleviate and reproduce barriers to care. • Global norms around gender-affirming care are adapted to align with China's local healthcare infrastructure. • Healthcare providers embrace a more inclusive, non-binary approach to trans medicine. • Social and institutional challenges undercut the practical implementation of global norms around gender-affirming care. • Family involvement in gender-affirming care reproduces medical gatekeeping and barriers to access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's population has begun to age rapidly in the past several years and this trend is predicted to continue. In the face of this growing older population, the existing number of aged care personnel, especially medical care professionals, can hardly meet the demand for aged care services. To develop geriatric nursing micro-credentials (MCs) for undergraduate nursing students based on standardized training objectives and to specify the learning goals and course modules that correspond to each specific MC. Modified Delphi study. An initial set of geriatric nursing MCs were developed based on the training objectives. Expert group discussion (n=13) reviewed the clarity and intelligibility of the statements' wording and supplemented the framework. A three-round Delphi survey (n=15) was then employed to obtain a consensus on the learning goals and course modules via an online questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. The final geriatric nursing MCs consisted of six courses, namely fundamentals of geriatric nursing (8 modules), geriatric sociology (6 modules), geriatric clinical nursing (3 modules), geriatric psychological nursing (8 modules), geriatric rehabilitation nursing (8 modules) and geriatric hospice care (10 modules). Nursing faculty can use the geriatric nursing MCs developed in this study to train current undergraduate nursing students to become backups for current, fully credentialed geriatric caregivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is often considerable anxiety and conflicting advice concerning the benefits of presenting/being evaluated first. We thus investigate how expert evaluators vary in their evaluations of entrepreneurial proposals based upon the order in which they are evaluated. Our research setting is a premiere innovation fund competition in Beijing, China, where the prize money at stake is economically meaningful, and evaluators are quasi-randomly assigned to evaluate written grant proposals without the possibility of peer influence. This enables us to credibly recover a causal position effect. We also theorize and test how heterogeneity in evaluators' prior (context-specific) judging experience moderates position effects. Overall, we find that a proposal evaluated first requires total assets in the top 10th percentile to merely equal the evaluation of a proposal in the bottom 10th percentile that is not evaluated first. Firm and evaluator fixed-effects models yield consistent findings. We consider evaluation design elements that may mollify these position effects in the discussion section. This paper was accepted by Sridhar Tayur, entrepreneurship and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives This study examines the longitudinal relationships between retrospective reports of early-life social relationships (i.e. having good friends, parent–child relationship quality, and childhood neighborhood social cohesion) and episodic memory in China. Methods We analyzed 2 waves of data (2011 and 2015) from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. The analytical sample included 9,285 respondents aged 45 and older at baseline. A lagged dependent variable approach was used to estimate the associations between measures of early-life social relationships and episodic memory change at the study's 4-year follow-up. Results Retrospective reports of better early-life social relationships are significantly associated with higher levels of episodic memory performance in 2015 among middle-aged and older Chinese, controlling for episodic memory in 2011, childhood socioeconomic status, adulthood sociodemographic variables, and the history of stroke. Educational attainment accounts for a significant portion of the associations between early-life social relationships and episodic memory. In contrast, mental health and social engagement in adulthood account for a small part of these associations. Discussion The findings suggest that positive early-life social relationships are beneficial for episodic memory in mid- and late life, and more research is needed to examine the underlying mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the publication of the Salamanca Statement, inclusive education has gained prominence at a global range. In China, this has seen the implementation of 'Learning in Regular Classroom' – a nationwide program initiated by the Chinese government in the 1980s to make regular schools accessible to children with disabilities. The developments of 'Learning in Regular Classroom' over a nearly four-decade time are laudable. Yet structural problems abound and persist. One has been 'lazy inclusivism' that insidiously conceals the unequal social order by strategically labelling certain populations as disadvantaged and diligently providing support to them through a mainstream framework that de facto silences their epistemologies and practices. 'Lazy inclusivism' sustains an astute system that tailors a cloak of laborious business to shroud its own laziness in achieving inclusion. Such labourious business is paradoxically lazy owing to its reductionist approach to inclusion that shows little interest in deconstructing the conservative understanding of disability, which itself is constructed and sustained within current schooling. This Special Issue collects wisdom of Chinese children, parents, and educators to force 'lazy inclusivism' to retreat. At the core of the collective wisdom is agency and resilience, both demonstrating autonomy and power in precarious conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades of developments in inclusive education have seen the waning of deficit discourse towards children with special needs, but exclusion has not yet left the scene. In response to this persistent problem, the Special Issue 'Destroying the Trojan Horse of "lazy inclusivism"' collects the wit of Chinese children, parents, and educators to promote inclusion. In this concluding paper, I engage with some sociological analyses of exclusion and inclusion followed by some sociological rethinkings of the notions of agency and resilience. My intention here is not to portray a panorama of the Special Issue or provide a summary of the knowledge built and lessons learnt throughout the articles included in the Special Issue. As these articles are empirically complex and contextually rich, it would be presumptuous to reduce those profound ideas to this concluding article. The concluding article therefore aims to question the perennial, conservative reproduction of structural problems that have long perturbed inclusive education; propose some sociological reworkings to force structural problems to retreat; and spark some debates and critiques among sociologists of education and colleagues of inclusive education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the intersection of gender, sexuality and class in shaping the ways in which 'leftover' women navigate legal and social discrimination. 'Leftover women' is a stigmatising term in China that refers to women who do not get married by the time they reach their late twenties. Based on my fieldwork in China with queer and heterosexual 'leftover' women, I introduce two strategies of stigma management: 'buying a licence to be deviant' and 'identity-hopping'. The former is a strategy adopted by heterosexual women with financial resources and a desire frequently expressed by queer women. 'Buying a licence to be deviant' refers to the strategy of accumulating sufficient financial resources to justify one's choice to be deviant and deal with the legal consequences of the evasion of the population policies. 'Identity-hopping' is popular among those with a lower social and financial status, who use the law's labelling function to hop from one stigmatised identity to another as a way to deal with stigma. From an intersectional lens, this paper advances law and society's study of stigma and discrimination by emphasising the hierarchy of stigmatised identities and the strategy of using the law's power of labelling identities to hop from one identity to another. It also demonstrates how the intersection of gender, sexuality and class complicates the ways in which leftover women understand and engage with the law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I was initially reluctant to become a sociologist because my father, William Foote Whyte, was a prominent sociologist. Growing up during the Cold War led me in sequence through studying physics to Russian studies and then into Chinese studies, and I finally chose sociology as the best discipline for research on China, the primary focus of my career. The theoretical and methodological eclecticism of our discipline enabled me to do research on many intriguing research problems regarding contemporary Chinese society, first at a distance from Hong Kong and then through a series of collaborative surveys conducted within China. I found I could use sociological theories to more accurately and objectively interpret Chinese social patterns, while at the same time some paradoxical features of Chinese society enabled me to challenge existing social science theories. Over the course of my career I was gratified to see the sociological study of China move from being a somewhat marginal specialty into joining the mainstream of our discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Essay brings Abebe, Chilton, and Ginsburg's Lead Essay into conversation with the literature on comparative international law to ask whether the social scientific approach to international law is "international." In particular, this Essay takes the case of scholarship on international law in China to examine why or why not particular methodological and theoretical perspectives on international law may gain traction in certain jurisdictions' legal academies. There are a number of linguistic, pedagogic, institutional, and, ultimately, political reasons why the Chinese scholarship that uses social science to understand international law is still nascent. At the same time, critical approaches to international law in the Chinese literature are ascendant. This Essay explains these divergent trends through a sociology of knowledge lens and offers provisional thoughts about future trajectories for the study of international law in a period during which China's influence on the international system will most likely grow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese rural-to-urban migrant children frequently experience discrimination, which thereby often results in significant negative consequences. However, little is known about the contribution of perceived discrimination experiences to non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). This study aimed to examine the relationship between perceived discrimination and NSSI, the mediating role of loneliness in this relationship, and the moderating roles of parent-child cohesion and gender. Six hundred fifty-seven migrant children completed a perceived discrimination scale, an NSSI questionnaire, a loneliness scale, and a parent-child cohesion inventory. Results showed that there was a significant positive association between perceived discrimination and NSSI among migrant children. Loneliness mediated the relationship between perceived discrimination and NSSI. Moreover, parent-child cohesion demonstrated a moderating effect on the mediation via loneliness; the indirect association between perceived discrimination and NSSI via loneliness was only significant in low parent-child cohesion condition, but not in the high condition. Additionally, there were differences by gender, with a significantly stronger mediating effect of loneliness among migrant girls compared with migrant boys. The findings from this study contribute to the understanding of the underlying mechanisms in the relationship between perceived discrimination and NSSI. Discussion also provides directions for future interventions and delineate how programs could be designed to target loneliness and parent-child cohesion among migrant children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology as a dominant discipline usually assesses the two groups of countries in various terms. The industrial world (The North) is widely different from the countries of developing world (The South) including their demographic trends. The North world countries that experienced socio-cultural change earlier, their demographic norms and values have changed too in that, women have started giving birth to fewer children, followed by less maternal mortality and longer life expectancy for them. In African countries where women give birth to 7-8 children, they usually remain at very high risk. Sociology as a comprehensive social science investigates the causeand- effect of high and low fertility rate within women. Quality of children in the South world countries among other factors remain poor from nutritional and educational viewpoints. One of the risks of high pregnancy and child birth is associated with deaths of mothers. Babies of such mothers are at the risk of low birth weight and often preterm birth. Average age of the first birth between 26 and 29 years, overall, provides better opportunities and quality of life to the newborns. While Africa is a great threat, as far as high birth rate is concerned, Asian (especially East Asian) countries are improving well, and currently have a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 1.5 children in their life time by an average woman. China also took a revolutionary step since 1979 to modify its population patterns. Method of research used in the present paper is of qualitative type, using documents to complete the manuscript. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generating new knowledge and inspiring future studies are part of the value of a review. While acknowledging the contribution of the bibliometric analysis published in this journal by Qin et al. to understanding the development of environmental and resource sociology in USA, this commentary discussed the relevance of its claims and the bibliometric method it employed to promoting integrated environment sociology in China. Given the fact that the institutional/disciplinary establishments and self-consciousness of researchers in China differ largely from that in USA, future efforts need focus on the identification of common research units/issues and development of multi/inter/trans-disciplinary research frameworks for studies on environment-society interactions. When it is guided with valid scientific questions aiming to understand the complementarity of different disciplinary knowledge, bibliometric analysis can be powerful for cross-disciplinary communication and cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article furnishes a critical commentary on social work in the People's Republic of China (PRC). It is maintained that it is important to contextualise this development by taking into account the restoration of capitalism and wider structures of governance. Although there is no perfect alignment, it is argued that the (re-)creation of social work occurred during the same period when a Chinese proletariat was (re-)created. Drawing on the work of Antonio Gramsci and resisting a reductively mechanistic interpretation of the profession's evolution, it is maintained that social work's new centrality in the PRC can be best understood if it is situated alongside the hegemonic project of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to construct, what is referred to as, the 'harmonious society'. The article concludes by tentatively identifying the emerging contours of social work with distinctive Chinese traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early twentieth-century China, as with other post-imperial states, faced the challenge of creating a nation encompassing different social groups and cultures. How to identify ethnic groups living in the borderlands and generate nationwide social cohesion became a fundamental question that concerned multiple intellectual communities. This article traces the formation of two approaches to ethnicity—ethnology and sociology—at that time. These two approaches, configuring "ethnic differences" in dissimilar ways, were received differently by the public. In the end, the ethnological approach prevailed and the sociological approach was marginalized. This outcome exemplifies a possible hierarchy of knowledge, but also involves the politics of knowledge. This article shows that the disparate visions of "ethnic others" were produced by intellectuals differently positioned within the social context of post-imperial China. The positionalities of these disciplines explain much of their intellectual alignment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores European football's cross-cultural appeals in China by focusing on Chinese fans' active readings of this globalized cultural text. Using analytical tools from both sport sociology and transnational reception studies, I understand Chinese urban middle-class supporters as a reflexive audience whose meaning-making of European football is contextualized in their local urban experience. The in-depth interviewing reveals that these fans' interpretations of their favourite European football teams as symbols of 'collective cooperation' and 'beautiful football' produce critical reflections on the discourses of 'competitive individualism' and 'utilitarian commercialism' which are part of the rising ideology during China's neoliberal reform. Through the comparison among European football, Chinese football, and popular 'national' sports in China, the participants further contest the prevalence of these discourses in China's broader economic and social arrangements over which they are engaged in constant material struggles. I further discuss how the transnational consumption of European football offers the Chinese urban middle-class a symbolic space to project their reflexivity on the reforming process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When learning about the existence of unobservable scientific phenomena such as germs or religious phenomena such as God, children are receptive to the testimony of other people. Research in Western cultures has shown that by 5 to 6 years of age, children--like adults--are confident about the existence of both scientific and religious phenomena. We examined the beliefs of secular and Christian children growing up in China as well as the beliefs of their parents. All participants--secular and Christian children, as well as their parents--were confident about the existence of the scientific phenomena. No such consensus emerged for religious phenomena. Whereas secular children and their parents were skeptical, Christian children and their parents were confident about the existence of the religious phenomena. Moreover, a similar pattern was found for Christian children in preschools and for Christian children with more extensive exposure to the secular state curriculum. Indeed, for religious phenomena, a positive association was found between the beliefs of Christian children and their parents, highlighting the potential influence of parental input in a predominantly secular society. Overall, the results indicate that children's religious beliefs are related to the beliefs of their parents, even when those beliefs go against the majority view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to examine depressive symptoms in ruralurban migrant workers in mainland China, with a focus on the moderating roles of community factors (i.e., community support network, community cohesion and community composition) in the relation between work stress and depressive symptoms. This study used secondary data from a national representative study conducted by the Social Survey Center at SUN-YETSEN University of China in 2014. The final sample contained 1434 participants from 29 provinces of China (Mean age = 36.47, SD = 11.91). Being female, lower self-rated health, lower levels of self-rated class, lower levels of community cohesion and higher work stress were related to higher depressive symptoms. Community cohesion was found to lessen the migrant workers depressive symptoms but was not identified as a moderator for work stress and depressive symptoms. Community supportive networks moderated the relation between work stress and depressive symptoms. Rural–urban migrant workers in China experienced high work stress and high depressive symptoms. Public health policies or programs should help expand and strengthen migrant workers' supportive network size, and facilitate the creation of community cohesion to lessen depressive symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]