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How to understand the internal operational mechanism of Chinese society? As the core question of Chinese sociological scholar's efforts of building up the subjectivity of China's sociology, this question faces simultaneously three challenges: the research object, the research method, and how researchers define themselves. As a result of this effort, and based on our fieldwork experiences in both rural and urban Chinese societies, we intend to answer this question from an unusual angle. We coined a concept of "social ground", referring to those "unchanged/stable subjects" in the history of Chinese society. This paper tries to explore this conception from such perspectives as the wisdom of life, family-oriented culture, morality, popularity and reputation, in order to understand the concept against the transformation of modern Chinese society. Our research finds out that the social ground which has always possessed the traditional characteristics does not oppose the transformation of the society. On the country, it combines with the new historical conditions and thus produces new possibilities of history while keeps its deepest historical meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on women's bodily experience of breast cancer in the context of sociology of the body. Based on the in-depth interviews of 14 Chinese women with breast cancer, we constructed a "deformed body" analytical framework to be distinguished from a widely used "disease-based" one. For most of the women, breast cancer means mastectomy or removing an important part of the body that signifies the female gender. This type of bodily deformity challenges the normal female body. Therefore, breast cancer not only causes bodily pains but pertains to the definition of the normality and perfectness of a female body, and even that of the normality of being a female in the mainstream culture regarding the body. A "deformed body" framework has four aspects: bodily functioning and experience (pains and mobility constraints), bodily appearance (hair and breast losses), personal identity (the patient identity, the female identity, and the normal social identity), and interpersonal relationships (especially the intimate relationships). The narratives from this conceptual framework display how the females, while experiencing the breast cancer (especially after the mastectomy), face and manage their "deformed" bodies as defined by the medicine and society, and how to restore the "normality" of their bodies and intimate relationships. The body moves from the medical space to the social space. The four aspects of the sense of deformity, as well as the journey toward normality, show specific stage/phase-linked characteristics in the process of diagnosis, chemotherapy, and rehabilitations that are nevertheless intricately connected, reflecting the multidimensional and political nature of the body in everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With fast globalization and large-scaled transnational population migration, different ethnic groups and cultures exchange, collide, and even conflict with one another, which has shown unprecedented trends in breadth and depth. Diaspora research has thus risen and proliferated. It has stepped into various areas of culturology, anthropology, ethnology, economics, politics, and literature, and all fields are interrelated; nevertheless, diaspora research has the characteristics of the sociology discipline and all branches are related to sociology as ethnic groups, immigration, emigration, refugees, ethnicity, and transnationalism are all major concepts of concern in sociology. Multicultural theories have greatly stimulated the development of diaspora studies and they have become the important theoretical basis for diaspora research. Being the major targets in diaspora studies, diaspora groups are classified into the classic group and the modern group. Distinguishing the two helps depicting the historical frame of diaspora issues and their developmental trends. Immi/Emigrants have a special position among the diaspora groups, with ethnicity being the core of diaspora studies. Transnationalism has become the realistic expression of diaspora as transnational mobility is now the reality that has attracted keen attention in current diaspora studies. Classic diaspora concepts have been changing along with rapid societal changes and diaspora studies are closely related to these changes. Concepts change in meaning, similarities and differences, and interconnections and transformations. Such conceptual changes directly reflect the change trends in reality. The current paper distinguishes the differences in diaspora conceptual changes; discusses the origin, developmental history, and characteristics of diaspora studies; and tries to speculate the future developmental trends in diaspora research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction and application of hermeneutics by contemporary Chinese scholars mainly focus on the fields of philosophy, theology, law, and literary theory, while the psychological and sociological implications of this approach are often neglected. "The moral topography of the self" by Charles Taylor, a representative of the hermeneutical approach in contemporary social theories, will correct the bias. The "topography" leads to the main parts of Taylor's great book Sources of the Self, and occupies a basic position in his hermeneutical thoughts. Earlier than Sources of the Self, this theory was first published in a collection about the relationships between hermeneutics and psychological theories. Its sociological implications were demonstrated in Taylor's famous political theoretical paper The Politics of Recognition, which took it as its theoretical basis. In this writing, Taylor absorbed and revised the classical psychological and sociological thoughts of Freud, Weber, and Durkheim, turning the "topography" into an ontological hermeneutical theory with the power of interpreting complicated historical experiences in a clear way. This theory has extraordinary significance to the "cultural self-awareness" of Chinese Sociology and Psychology, because it can strongly stimulate the interest of "cultural self-awareness" in empirical studies, that is, to highlight the cultural subjectivity and communicate peacefully between cultures. Both psychology and sociology embedded in culture have integrative perspectives which make these two sciences being recognized as the fundamental disciplines of humanity and social sciences. And between the two, sociology is more outstanding in its integrative power. Taylor's discussion of "the moral topography of the self" originates from psychological issues but concludes with strong sociological implications. This way of thinking and its framework are helpful to psychology and sociology, the latter, in particular. The theory will have its unique effects in the new wave of interdisciplinary cultural studies in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]