European and Chinese Sociologies : A New Dialogue [1 ed.] 9789004217164, 9789004211742

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European and Chinese Sociologies

International Comparative Social Studies Editor-in-Chief

Mehdi P. Amineh

Amsterdam International School for Social Sciences Research (AISSR) – University of Amsterdam and International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) – University of Leiden Editorial Board

Sjoerd Beugelsdijk, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Simon Bromley, Open University, UK Harald Fuhr, University of Potsdam, Germany Gerd Junne, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Ngo Tak-Wing, University of Leiden, The Netherlands Mario Rutten, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Advisory Board

W.A. Arts, University College Utrecht, The Netherlands L. Hantrais, Loughborough University, UK G.C.M. Lieten, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Willem van Schendel, University of Amsterdam/International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam L. Visano, York University, Canada

VOLUME 26 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/icss

European and Chinese Sociologies A New Dialogue

Edited by

Laurence Roulleau-Berger and Li Peilin

LEIDEN • BOSTON LEIDEN • BOSTON 2012

Cover illustration: “Sociology” by Isabelle Durand. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data European and Chinese sociologies : a new dialogue / edited by Laurence Roulleau-Berger, Li Peilin. p. cm. -- (International comparative social studies, 1568-4474 ; v. 26) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-21174-2 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. Sociology--Europe. 2. Sociology--China. 3. Sociology--Comparative method. I. Roulleau-Berger, Laurence, 1956- II. Li, Peilin, 1955III. Title. IV. Series. HM477.E85E97 2011 301.094--dc23 2011034920

ISSN 1568-4474 ISBN 978 90 04 21174 2 Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

CONTENTS List of Tables and Figures�������������������������������������������������������������������������� ix Acknowledgments�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� xi Notes on Contributors�����������������������������������������������������������������������������xiii List of Abbreviations������������������������������������������������������������������������������� xxv INTRODUCTIONS European and Chinese Sociologies: A New Dialogue���������������������������� 3   Laurence Roulleau-Berger Chinese Sociology in Global Perspective����������������������������������������������� 19   Li Peilin PART ONE

SOCIETIES, MODERNITIES AND GLOBALIZATION 1  Modernity and Modernization������������������������������������������������������������ 31   Alain Touraine 2  The Economical Status and Social Attitudes of Migrant Workers in China���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 45   Li Peilin and Li Wei 3  The Crisis of ‘Organised Modernity’�������������������������������������������������� 65   Robert Castel 4  Transition Sociology Trends and New Prospects����������������������������� 75   Sun Liping 5  Multiple Modernities, Inequalities and Intermediate Spaces���������� 83   Laurence Roulleau-Berger 6  Neither Global nor National: Novel Assemblages of Territory, Authority, and Rights���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 93   Saskia Sassen

vi

contents PART TWO

CLASS, INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY   7  Social Mobility and Social Class in China: A Comparative Study of Intragenerational Mobility Models Before and After the Economic Reforms�����������������������������������������������������������117 Li Chunling   8  The Rise of the ‘Middle Classes’ or the Moyennisation of Society in Contemporary France: A Difficult Debate��������������127 Catherine Bidou-Zachariasen   9  Individualism, Autonomy, Social Institution: How to overcome the Dichotomy between the Individual and Society�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������137 Alain Ehrenberg 10  Social Existence of Chinese Middle Class in Contemporary China: Class Cognition and Political Consciousness�������������������147 Li Lulu 11  Guanxilization and Categorization: Theoretical Considerations Based on Two Case Studies����������������������������������163 Yang Yiyin PART THREE

STATE, DEMOCRATY AND CITIZENSHIP 12  Conflict, Trust and Democracy in Eastern Europe����������������������177 Anna Krasteva 13  Civil Society in Community Governance: The Experience from China�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������187 Li Youmei 14  Testing Recognition: New Injunctions and Disjunctions of Democracy in Western Europe���������������������������������������������������199 Jean-Paul Payet 15  A New Economy of Legality and the Process of Legitimization in Contemporary Societies������������������������������������207 Jacques Commaille 16  Folk Society and Ritual State�����������������������������������������������������������215 GuoYuhua

contentsvii 17  Dual integration of Social Order: Analysis of a Case of Property Right Dispute����������������������������������������������������������������223 Zhang Jing 18  Ethics, Legitimacy and Vulnerability in Europe���������������������������235 Patrick Pharo 19  Housing Transforms China: The Homeowners’ Rights Campaign in B City��������������������������������������������������������������������������245 Shen Yuan PART FOUR

ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATIONS AND NEW SOCIAL INEQUALITIES 20  Employment Regulation in the Wake of Globalisation���������������255 Michel Lallement 21  Is There a Future for Industrial Democracy?��������������������������������265 Catherine Paradeise 22  Industrial Relations and Inequalities in Western Europe: Questions for the Evolution of Chinese Labour Markets������������273 David Marsden 23  Three Types of Discrimination against Migrant Workers in the Labor Market and Logical Consequences��������������������������283 Liu Shiding 24  Dualism and Diversity: A Comparative Analysis of Unemployment in Italy��������������������������������������������������������������������293 Enzo Mingione and Jonathan Pratschke 25  Three Decades of Chinese Women. State, Family, Women: Comments on the Last Two Decades of Women or Gender Related Sociological Studies����������������������������������������������309 Tong Xin Conclusion�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������319 Michel Wieviorka Bibliography���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������323 Index���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������341

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Figures 2.1  Attribution to individual success of migrant workers and city workers���������������������������������������������������������������������������58 11.1  Classification of “one of us” and “outsider” and their interaction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������167 11.2  Formative mechanism for the contextualized concept of “us”������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������172 22.1  The contractual constraints and examples of common types of work rules governing the zone of acceptance���������278 22.2  Distribution of ‘lean’ and ‘learning’ models of work organisation in EU countries in 2000.������������������������������������280 24.1  Unemployment rates in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, UK��������������������������������������������������������������������������������295 24.2  Female unemployment rate in northern and southern Italy, 1979–2006�������������������������������������������������������������������������297 24.3  Male unemployment rate in northern and southern Italy, 1979–2006����������������������������������������������������������������������������������298 24.4  Female employment rate (25–64 years) in northern and southern Italy, by education level, 1999–2006�����������������������300 24.5  Male employment rate (25–64 years) in northern and southern Italy, by education level, 1999–2006�����������������������300 24.6  Female unemployment rate in northern and southern Italy by age group, 1999–2006��������������������������������������������������302 24.7  Male unemployment rate in northern and southern Italy by age group, 1999–2006��������������������������������������������������303 24.8  Unemployment rate in northern and southern Italy by gender and age, 2001������������������������������������������������������������304 24.9  Unemployment rate in northern and southern Italy by gender and age, 2006������������������������������������������������������������304 24.10 Female unemployment rate in northern and southern Italy by age and educational attainments, 2006���������������������306 24.11 Male unemployment rate in northern and southern Italy by age and educational attainments, 2006���������������������306

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list of tables and figures Tables

2.1  Month salary between migrant workers and city workers�������48 2.2  Weekly working hours of migrant workers and city workers������������������������������������������������������������������������������������49 2.3  Professional skills of migrant workers and city workers����������50 2.4  Multiple regression analysis of factors that influence working income�����������������������������������������������������������������������������50 2.5  Social security enjoyed by migrant workers and city workers������������������������������������������������������������������������������������51 2.6  Logistic regression analysis of factors that influence social security enjoyed by migrant workers and city worker��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������52 2.7  Sense of safety between migrant workers and city workers������������������������������������������������������������������������������������55 2.8  Sense about social justice of migrant workers and city workers��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������55 2.9  Attitude of satisfaction of migrant workers and city workers��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������56 2.10 Perception on interest conflicts of migrant workers and city workers������������������������������������������������������������������������������������57 2.11 Correlation analysis of awareness of interest conflicts with social attitudes of migrant workers and city workers���������������59 2.12 Sense of democracy and rights of migrant workers and city workers������������������������������������������������������������������������������������60 2.13 Identity recognition by farmers, migrant workers and city workers������������������������������������������������������������������������������������61 2.14 Recognition of social-economic status by migrant workers and city workers��������������������������������������������������������������62 2.15 Comments and expectancy to life of migrant workers and city workers�����������������������������������������������������������������������������62 10.1  MCA coefficients of various classes������������������������������������������157 10.2  Results of MCA coefficients of different classes����������������������158 19.1  A typology of residents committees������������������������������������������251

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book is the result of a very successful cooperation between Chinese and European sociologists started in 2006. In 2008, from the 30th of June to the 4th of July, the first International Conference on China and the internationalization of the sociology was held in Paris and Lyon. This conference was organized by the CNRS Interdisciplinary Research Center of Economical Sociology (LISE), and by the Cnam (Paris) in partnership with the CNRS Research Center of Worlds and Societies (Modys) (Lyon). The scientific committee included: Robert Castel, Director of research EHESS (Paris); Guo Yuhua, Professor of sociology, University of Tsinghua (Beijing); Michel Lallement, Professor of sociology, Cnam, LISE; Jean-Louis Laville, Professor of sociology, Cnam, LISE; Li Peilin, Professor and Director of the Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Beijing, President of the Chinese Sociological Association; Liu Shiding, Professor of Sociology, Beijing University; Jean-Claude Rabier, Professor of sociology, University of Lyon 2; Laurence Roulleau-Berger, Research Director at CNRS, ENS Lyon, in charge of the scientific coordination of this Conference; Sun Liping, Professor of sociology, University of Tsinghua (Beijing); Michel Wieviorka, Professor at EHESS (Paris) and Director of Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (Paris). Different French institutions have supported this conference, we would like to thank them very much: the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS), the Conservatoire des Arts et des Métiers (Cnam), the University of Lyon 2, the French Ministry of Research, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Région Ile-de-France, Institut of Human Sciences in Lyon and the Région Rhône-Alpes. After this very successful Conference, we decided to publish a book. This publication would include the most famous European and Chinese sociologists who were invited to this Conference. We would like to thank, for their very academic contributions to this book, Catherine Bidou-Zachariasen, Robert Castel, Jacques Commaille, Alain Ehrenberg, Guo Yuhua, Anna Krasteva, Michel Lallement, David Marsden, Li Chunling, Li Lulu, Li Youmei, Liu Shiding, Li Wei, Enzo Mingione, Catherine Paradeise, Jonathan Pratshke, Patrick Pharo,

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acknowledgments

Jean-Paul Payet, Shen Yuan, Sun Liping, Tong Xin, Yang Yiyin, Zhang Jing. We would like especially to thank Saskia Sassen, Alain Touraine and Michel Wieviorka. Thank you also to all translators Andy Wilson, Neil O’Brien, Miriam Rosen, Jean-Marie Sauboua, Benn E.Williams, and David Bartel. Thank you also to Peng Lu, researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing, who has done so much for the editorial work. Laurence Roulleau-Berger and Li Peilin

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Catherine Bidou-Zachariasen is Research Director at CNRS in sociology, at the IRISSO (Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire en sciences sociales), a French CNRS research center in Paris-Dauphine University. She was director of this research center until 2009. Her main research topics are middle classes sociology, post-industrial towns, gentrification process. She is now working in a French program ANR (Agence nationale de la recherche) on governance and globalisation in four major metropolises in Latin America (Buenos Aires, Caracas, Mexico City and Sao Paulo). Her own research deals with middle classes housing in Mexico City. Robert Castel is Director at l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en sciences sociales. He founded and led the Research Group on sociability and the social (1982–1990) before leading the Research Center of Social Movements Research Center) (1995–1999). He is Doctor Honoris Causa from the Lausanne University and Buenos Aires University and was awarded the rank of Knight of the Order of Academic Palms. His first works dealt with the sociology of psychiatry, psychoanalysis and the psychological culture. From the beginning of the 80s, his main research focused on labour transformation, social intervention, social protection and the status of the modern individual. His research resulted in numerous publications, among the most recent books: Les Métamorphoses de la question sociale. Une chronique du salariat, Paris, Fayard, 1995; (From manual workers to wage laborers. Transformation of the social question translated and edited by Richard Boyd, New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers, 2002) Propriété privée, propriété sociale, propriété de soi (avec C. Haroche), Fayard, 2001; L’insécurité sociale. Qu’est-ce qu’être protégé? Seuil, 2003; La discrimination négative. Citoyens ou indigènes? Seuil, 2007; La montée des incertitudes. Travail, protections, statut de l’individu, Seuil, 2009. Jacques Commaille is Professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Cachan, France), researcher at the Institut des sciences sociales du politique. Chairman of the Foundation “Network of French Institutes for Advanced Study” His main fields of research: political sociology of law and justice, political sociology of public action, relations between

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legality and political regulation, theory of political regulation. Among his recent publications: La fonction politique de la justice (Ed. with Martine Kaluszynski.), La Découverte, Paris, 2007; La juridicisation du politique (Ed. with Laurence Dumoulin and Cécile Robert), 2nd ed., LGDJ-lextenso éditions, 2010; « Sociologie de l’action publique » in Dictionnaire des Politiques Publiques, Paris, Presses de Science Po, Paris, 3rd ed.; 2010; « Justice et globalisation », in Dictionnaire de la globalisation. Droit, science politique, sciences sociales », Paris, LGDJlextenso éditions, 2010; « Heurs et malheurs de la légalité dans les sociétés contemporaines. Une sociologie politique de la j­ udiciarisation », L’Année Sociologique, vol. 59/2009, n° 1 (with Laurence Dumoulin); « Les vertus politiques du droit. Mythes et réalités », Droit et Société, n° 78, 2010. Alain Ehrenberg, Sociologist, Senior Researcher at CNRS, author of four books on individualism: Le Culte de la performance, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1991 (translated in Portugese, Brasil), L’Individu incertain, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1995, La Fatigue d’être soi: dépression et société, Odile Jacob, 1998 (translated in Italian, German, Spanish/ Argentina, Danish and English, The Weariness of the Self, McGill University Press, 2010 with a new foreword), La Société du malaise, Paris, Odile Jacob (to be published in German by Suhrkamp and in Italian by Einaudi in 2011). Guo Yuhua is Professor of department of Sociology at Tsinghua University in Beijing. She earned her Ph.D. degree in Ethnology in Beijing Normal University in 1990 and seized a post-doctoral position at Department of Anthropology at Harvard University in the 2000– 2001 academic year. She is the author of many articles and books on social anthropology, social memory, rural China, and folk belief and ritual. Her recent publications in English or French include: A New Agenda for the Sociology of Transformation in China (In: The ISA Handbook of Diverse Sociological Traditions, 2009, SAGE Publishers), “Family Relations: The Generational Gap at the Table” (in Feeding China’s Little Emperors, Stanford University Press, 2000). Anna Krasteva is Director of the Dept. of Political Sciences and of CERMES (Centre for Refugees, Migration and Ethnic Studies) at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia (Bulgaria) and editor-in-chief of the journal South Eastern Europe (Brill) and member of the editorial board



notes on contributorsxv

of the Nationalism and Ethnic Politics (Routlege). She is doctor honoris causa of the University Lille 3, France and has been awarded the international scientific honour of « Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques ». She has been a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Nantes, France, has given lectures and has been guest professor at more than 10 foreign universities. She is author of more than 70 publications in 13 countries, among which Migrations from and to See (Ed. Ravenna, Longo Editore, 2010), Communities and identities in Bulgaria (Ed., Ravenna, Longo Editore, 1999). She is member of numer­ous international scientific boards, among which of the network Maisons des sciences de l’homme, (France) and of the Institute for Central, Eastern and Balkan Europe at the University of Bologna (Italy). Li Chunling is Professor of Institute of Sociology of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Her primary research interests are inequality and stratification, as well as sociology of education and gender studies. She has authored a few of books and published tens of articles on these issues. Her recent publications include: Formation of Middle Class in Comparative Perspective: Process, Influence, and Socioeconomic Consequences (2009), Theories of Social Stratification (2008), Cleavage or Fragment: A Quantitative Analysis on the Social Stratification of the Contemporary China (2005). Li Lulu is Professor and Chairperson of Department of Sociology, Renmin University of China. He earned his Ph.D. degree in the same institute in 2002. As a leading sociologist in Social Stratification, Modernization, and Organizations, he also serves as Vice-president of Chinese Sociological Association. His publications focus on the change of social stratification in China, transformation of Chinese working unit system, private entrepreneurs, occupation mobility, and so on. They have been published in Social Sciences in China, Sociological Studies, New Zealand Journal of Sociology, International Sociology, and other prestigious journals. Li Peilin is Professor and director of Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which is the largest national sociological  Institute in China. He also serves as the President of Chinese Sociological Association and chief-edit of Sociological Studies, the most important sociological journal in China. He earned his Ph.D. at

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University of Paris I (Pantheon-Sorbonne) in 1987. He has published and edited many articles, books, and essay collections, in Chinese, English, and French, on social stratification and mobility (particular Chinese domestic migrant workers) and economic sociology (particular Chinese State Enterprises). He is also hosting several large projects, including “Chinese general social survey”, one of largest and earliest national sociological survey since 2006. Li Wei is an Associate Professor of Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He received his Ph.D. degree in the same institute in 1999. His main research areas are developmental sociology and economic sociology. In 2002–2003, he was invited by Korean Advanced Foundation to Busan University as a visiting scholar and published several compressive articles on class conciseness of working class in China and South Korea. As the head of Department of Social Development of Institute of Sociology of CASS, he is also the coordinator of “Chinese general social survey”. Li Youmei is Professor of Sociology and vice-president of Shanghai University. Graduated at the Center for the Sociology of Organiza­tions at Sciences Po, Paris (Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris). She dedicated the communication between Chinese and French academic communities and was awarded Chevalier of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques in 2006. She also holds several distinguished positions in government consultative bodies and academic organizations, ­including Consultative Committee of the Ministry of Education of China, Shang­ hai Municipal Government, Sociology Division, E-Institute of Shang­ hai Universities, and French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). Her major research interests are Organizational Sociology and Human’s Cooperative Mechanism in Advanced Industrial Society. Liu Shiding is Professor of Department of Sociology at Peking University. He has been deputy chair of Department of Sociology, and Director of The Center for Sociological Research and Development Studies of China. He earned his M.A. degree of Political Economy in Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1983 and moved from there to Peking University in 1992. As a leading scholar in economic sociology, his works and projects cover a wide range of issues, including institutional changes in China, village enterprises, high-technical zones grass-roots, financial institutions, labor markets, and game theory.



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David Marsden is Professor of Industrial Relations at the London School of Economics, and a member of the Centre for Economic Performance. His research has focused on the comparative study of labour markets and employment relations, with a special interest in the nature of the employment relationship. He completed his doctorate at the Laboratoire d’Économie et de Sociologie du Travail (CNRS), Aixen-Provence. His main books include: The End of Economic Man (1986), and A Theory of Employment Systems (1999), and he is currently working on a theory of labour markets and human resource management. He has recently completed a study of incentive pay in Britain and France. He has advised a number of international organisations on employment and pay, including the ILO, the OECD, and the European Commission, and has worked with trade unions and practitioners on these issues. Enzo Mingione is Professor of Sociology at the University of MilanoBicocca. He has been Dean of the Faculty of Sociology at the University of Milano Bicocca from 2004 to 2010. He has previously taught at the Universities of Messina and Padua. He is among the founder editors of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, President of the Fondazione Bignaschi, Milano (Foundation for the assistance and study of the aged). He has been member of the Supiot Commission on the future of work and Coordinator of the EU Research Training Network URBEUROPE (Urban Europe Between Identity and Change) from 2002–2006. He is the coordinator of the Ph.D. in Sociology at the SUM (Instituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, Firenze) and President of Doctorate School SCISS (Studi Comparativi e Internazionali in Scienze Sociali).His main fields of interest are poverty, social exclusion, informal sector, unemployment, economic and urban sociology. Among his books: Social Conflict and the City, Blackwell, Oxford (1981); Fragmented Societies, Blackwell, Oxford (1991); (Ed) Urban poverty and the Underclass, Blackwell, Oxford (1996); Sociologia della Vita Economica, Carocci, Roma (1998); Il Lavoro, together with Enrico Pugliese, Carocci, Roma (2010). Patrick Pharo is Director of research at CNRS, member of CERSES (Centre de Recherche Sens Ethique Société, Université Paris Descartes). His field of research is cognitive and moral sociology. His main empirical topics concerned the moral consciousness of leftist militants and manual workers, the acts of civility and civism in everyday life, the

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ordinary feelings of justice and injustice, the logics of respect, the natural genealogy of moral virtues, and, presently, he is studying new forms of addiction and dependence. His main books are: Le civisme ordinaire (1985), Le sens de l’action et la compréhension d’autrui (1993), L’injustice et le mal (1996), Sociologie de l’esprit (1997), Le sens de la justice (2001), La logique du respect (2001), Morale et Sociologie (2004), L’homme et le vivant (ed., 2004), Raison et civilisation (2006), Philosophie pratique de la drogue (2011). Michel Lallement is Professor of Sociology at the Conservatoire national  des arts et métiers (Paris, France). His research affiliations is with the Laboratoire interdisciplinaire pour la sociologie économique (Lise-Cnam-CNRS). He has been Guest Researcher in Germany (IAT, Gelsenkirchen, 1991; WZB, Berlin, 1998) and has taught at the Humboldt University of Berlin (chair Marc Bloch, 2009). His current research fields are the new forms of employment and working time management, the regulations of the labor market and the gender equality policies. He’s also is interested in international comparisons and in the history of sociology. He has written numerous articles and books on work, employment and industrial relations, including Le Travail. Une sociologie contemporaine (Gallimard, 2007), Le travail de l’utopie. Godin et le Familistère de Guise (Les Belles Lettres, 2009), Le travail sous tensions (éd. Sciences Humaines, 2010). With J. Spurk, he has also co-edited Stratégies de la comparaison internationale (CNRS éd., 2003) and, with I. Berrebi-Hoffmann, « A quoi servent les experts? », Cahiers internationaux de sociologie (n° 126, 2009). He is member of the editorial boards of Sociologie du travail and of L’ Année sociologique. He is also member of the international advisory board of the British Journal of Industrial Relations. Catherine Paradeise was trained in social sciences in an interdisciplinary environment in France and the US. She has been teaching sociology in several universities and Grandes Ecoles in France and Canada. She was deputy director of the department of social sciences and the humanities at the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) (1991–1994), and the head of the department of social sciences (1994–2000) before becoming deputy director of the ENS Cachan (2000–2003). She wrote and taught extensively about labor markets, industrial relations and professions. More recently, she turned to the analysis of organizational issues and public policies in research



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and higher education institutions. She is presently full professor at University Paris Est, senior researcher at LATTS (Laboratoire Territoires, Techniques et Sociétés), a French joint research center of CNRS and University Paris Est. She chairs IFRIS (Institut francilien Recherche Innovation Sociétés), a network institute dedicated to the study of sciences in society. She is currently senior editor for Organization studies and Sociologie du Travail. Jean-Paul Payet is a sociologist, Professor at the University of Geneva. He carried out many surveys into schools in underprivileged areas in various national contexts (South Africa, France, Switzerland, and Tunisia). His ethnographic investigations show the school institution and its actors put at the challenge of integration, the public ones socially stigmatized. He is particularly interested in the ordinary situations of the school life, in which teachers and school administrators are confronted with moral dilemmas. His interactionnist approach makes it possible to highlight both the situational constraints and the resources whose actors lay out to act in an ethical way and in order to promote equality. His team of research (SATIE) in Geneva develops a research program on the transformations of the contemporary institutions, in the educational field and, beyond in the field of work on others. During recent years, the theoretical work undertaken by this team was directed towards a sociological analysis of the processes of recognition, while in particular proposing to examine the voice of the “weak actors”. Jonathan Pratschke is an Irish citizen who lives and works in Italy. After graduating in Social and Political Science at Cambridge University, he obtained an MA in Social Science Data Analysis at the University of Essex and completed his PhD in Sociology at Trinity College Dublin. In his doctoral research, he analysed the responses of hospital nurses in Ireland and Southern Italy to the rationalisation of public health care. He moved to Italy in the late 1990s, where he began working at the University of Salerno, receiving tenure in 2005. As well as lecturing on Social Stratification, Labour Market Analysis, the Sociology of Development and other topics, he has participated in national and international research projects on inequalities in health and health care, social polarisation and the labour market, substance use amongst young people, the “digital divide”, the well-being of children and families and the measurement of social disadvantage. He has published on these issues as well as contributing to debates about statistical methods

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for the analysis of spatial data, Critical Realist philosophy of science and the role of the state in capitalist society. Laurence Roulleau-Berger is Research Director at CNRS, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Institut d’Asie orientale. She earned her Ph.D. (1982) and her Habilitation in sociology (2001) at University Lyon 2. She was visiting professor at different universities, notably in 2006 at Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and in 2011 in Department of sociology at Peking University (Beijing). Her research program was focused on urban segregation and intermediate spaces, work and employment, new migrations and multipolar economies in Europe and in China. She is now more involved in an epistemological reflex­ion with Chinese sociologists on the de-westernization of sociology. Her works have seen numerous publications, among the most recent books: New Chinese Migrations and Work in Europe PUM, Paris, 2007; (co-eds) International cities: between tensions and reacts from inhabitants, La Découverte, 2007; with Guo Yuhua, Li Peilin, Liu Shiding (eds): The new Chinese sociology, Ed. du CNRS, 2008; Gender and Migration, PUF, 2010; Dewesternization of Sociology. Europe in the mirror of China, L’ Aube, 2011. She is co-editor of the collection ENS Publishers De l’Orient à l’Occident (From the East to the West). Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Member of the Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University (www .saskiasassen.com). Her new books are Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton University Press 2008) and A Sociology of Globalization (W.W. Norton 2007). Other recent books are the 3rd. fully updated Cities in a World Economy (Sage 2006), the edited Deciphering the Global (Routledge 2007), and the coedited Digital Formations: New Architectures for Global Order (Prince­ ton University Press 2005). She has just completed for UNESCO a five-year project on sustainable human settlement with a network of researchers and activists in over 30 countries; it is published as one of the volumes of the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (Oxford, UK: EOLSS Publishers) [http://www.eolss.net]. The Global City came out in a new fully updated edition in 2001. Her books are translated into twenty one languages. She has received several honors and awards, most recently a doctor honoris causa from Delft University (Nether­ lands) and from DePaul University USA). She serves on several ­editorial boards and is an advisor to several international bodies. She is



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a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Cities, and chaired the Information Technology and International Cooperation Committee of the Social Science Research Council (USA). She has written for The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, Newsweek International, among others, and contributes regularly to www.OpenDemocracy.net and www.HuffingtonPost.com. Shen Yuan is Professor of department of Sociology at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He also serves as the chairman of the Department of Sociology and member of editorial board of Critical Sociology. His major interests are labor studies, social movement, and sociological Marxism. His recent publications in English and French include: “Strong and Weak Intervention” (Current Sociology, 2008, 56), “China: The Paradox and Possibility of a Public Sociology of Labor (co-authored with Ching Kwan Lee, Work and Occupations, 2009, 36)”, “The Reemer­ gence of Grass-roots State” (Polish Sociological Review, 2009, 3). Sun Liping is Professor of Sociology at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He graduated in Peking University in 1982 and worked there until 2000 when he was invited by Tsinghua University to rebuild its Sociology Department with Li Qiang and Shen Yuan. His major interest is social modernization in the 1980s, and then shifted to the change of social structure in the 1990s. After 2000, he committed himself to the studies of transitional societies. Now he is also a remarkable active intellectual in public sociology. His research work has wide influences within and beyond academia, particular his recent arguments on Sociology of Praxis (2000), Fractured Society (2002), and New Thinking on Social Stability Maintenance (2010). Tong Xin is Professor of department of Sociology at Peking University in Beijing. After working for the Chinese Law and Political Science University from 1986 to 1994, she started to pursue her Ph.D. degree in Department of Sociology of Peking University and became a faculty member of this institute in 1997. She is now serving as the deputy chairman of her department. As a expert on labor movement and gender studies, her recent publications in English include: Proactive Actors Taking the Operation of the Labor Union at B Corporation (Chinese Sociology and Anthropology, 2005, 37, 4) and “The Cultural Basis of Workers’ Collective Action in a Transitional state-Owned Enterprise

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During a Time of Transition” (Chinese Sociology and Anthropology, 2005, 38, 1). Alain Touraine, born in 1925, is a former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, has an agrégation of history and a Literature Ph.D. He is Director of studies at the EHESS where he founded the Center for the Study of Social Movements, of which he’s still a member. He has received Honoris Causa doctorates from more than twenty universities and belongs to many foreign academies. A great part of his work was dedicated to studying South American countries. His works benefit from more than 150 translations. His intellectual activity can be divided in three moments. He started by studying labor and workers’ movements, then, after May 68, he broadened his focus to all social movements and created a specific method to study them, the sociological intervention. A method he had the opportunity to use on many cases such as the Solidarnosc movement in Poland. The last period sees the decline of what he had named the new social movements and it leads him to search for a more comprehensive basis for understanding social behaviours and movements. Such a basis would rely on the notion of subject, that’s why since 2000, his publications are an indepth exploration and mapping of this notion. Michel Wieviorka, born in 1946, is Sociologist, Professor at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), and Director of Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (Paris). He was the President of the International Sociological Association from 2006 to 2010. His research program has been focused on social movements, terrorism, racism, violence and theoretical stakes: democracy and multiculturalism in particular. His publications in english: The Working Class Movement (Cambridge University Press, with Alain Touraine), The Arena of Racism (Sage, 1995), The Making of Terrorism (University of Chicago Press, 2003), The Lure of Antisemitism (Brill, 2007), Violence: A New Approach (Sage, 2009) and forthcoming Evil (Polity Press). Yang Yiyin is Professor of Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. As the Head of the Social Psychology Department of the Institute of Sociology, she also serves as president of Chinese Association of Social Psychology. Her major interests include: Social identity theory (cultural identity, gender



notes on contributorsxxiii

identity, citizenship identity), Indigenous social psychological research in Chinese societies (Guanxi, Zijiren, Bao), and Social modernity in social change. She publishes and translates some papers and books in these fields, and is hosting several large projects. Zhang Jing is Professor of department of Sociology at Peking University in Beijing. She also serves as the member of editorial board of Social Sciences in China. Her major interests of interests are political sociology, sociology of law, and sociopolitical transformation in China. Her recent publications in English include: The Uncertainty of Land Use Rules: An Interpretative Framework (Social Sciences in China, Winter 2004), and Neighborhood-Level Governance: The Growing Social Foundation of Public Sphere (in Jude Howell ed., Governance in China, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004). She was the visiting scholar at Australia National University (1999–2000) and Harvard University (2003–2004).

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ACWF BRIC CADIS CASS CCP CGSS CNRS CSA EHESS EU GDP ICC ILO IMF INS INSEE LC LISE

All-China Women’s Federation Brazil, Russia, India and China Center of Sociological Analysis and Intervention (Paris) Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (China) Chinese Communist Party Chinese General Social Survey National Center of Scientif Research (France) Chinese Sociological Association Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) European Union Gross Domestic Product International Criminal Court International Labour Organization International Monetary Fund Immigration and Naturalization Service (US) France’s national statistics institute (Paris) lower class CNRS Interdisciplinary Institute of Economic Sociology (Paris) LMC lower middle class LO Swedish trade union MC middle class MCA Multiple Classification Analysis MEDEF  French Business Confederation MODYS CNRS Research Center Worlds and Dynamics of Societies (Lyon) NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation NCD No class difference NCSR National Centre of Scientific Research OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development PCS socio-professional categories SAF (Svenska Arbetsgivareföreningen) Swedish Employers Association SARS severe acute respiratory syndrome SC self-employed class

xxvi SEC TAR UMC USA USSR WTO

list of abbreviations socio-economic groups Territory, Authority, and Rights upper middle class United States of America The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics World Trade Organizations

INTRODUCTIONS

EUROPEAN AND CHINESE SOCIOLOGIES: A NEW DIALOGUE Laurence Roulleau-Berger

Chinese sociology has been reconstructed since 1979 in such a way as to reflect both real specificities linked to the history of Chinese thought and the complexity of its societal context (Li Peilin, Li Qiang, Ma Rong, 2008) and affinities with European sociology (Roulleau-Berger and Guo Yuhua, Li Peilin, Liu Shiding, 2008). Initially, Western sociology was a major influence on the direction taken by this reinvention of Chinese sociology. Gradually, however, Chinese sociologists gradually ‘emancipated’ themselves from European thinking as they developed theories, positions and methods that sat alongside, complemented or even ran counter to European sociology. Today, intellectual legacies and specific theoretical approaches are intertwined in Chinese sociology. Chinese sociologists are very conversant with the various strands of Western European and American sociology, separating them out or linking them together as required by the matter in hand without denying any of them a certain legitimacy. Indeed, fully aware of sociology’s roots in capitalist civilisation, they have produced a brand of sociology that is truly rooted in the Chinese civilisation of both past and present as well as in North American and European sociology, whether through direct affiliation or various shifts and hybridisations of paradigms. In Chinese sociology, the shifts and hybridisations of paradigms are organised around a rejection of ethnocentric positions, resistance to the imposition of post-colonial intellectual models and affirmation of a ‘situated’ approach, in contrast to European sociology, which has had difficulty in incorporating non-Western thinking. Indeed, European sociology remains very ethnocentric and more or less closed to other sociologies. We are going to examine both how points of contact between the Chinese and European approaches to sociology are created and how the two approaches distance themselves from each other, taking as a starting point the following research questions: •  multiple modernities and globalisation •  class, the individual and society •  the state, democracy and citizenship •  economic change and the new social inequalities.

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laurence roulleau-berger 1.  Multiple Modernities and Globalisation

The question of the modernity of contemporary societies has lost none of its complexity. What is a modern society? How are we to decide whether or not a society is modern? The idea of society has been widely identified in the Western world with that of modernity. In the West, we take the view that there are several forms of modernity and that we may have witnessed the end of societies. Alain Touraine (2007) alludes to the unity of modernity and the multiplicity of paths to modernisation when he defines modernity in terms of adherence to rational thought and respect for individual rights. He advances the hypothesis (Chapter 1) that several types of society exist. There are those that combine modernity and modernisation, those that combine instrumental modernisation with a strengthening of apparatuses of domination and integration and those that fail either to achieve modernity or to find a path to modernisation. The concept of modernity is here based on the use of universalistic judgements; rational knowledge is superior to all other ways of explaining phenomena, the notion of rights applies to all individuals and the notion of subject has to be seen as lying at the heart of the question. Alain Touraine and Khosrokhavar (2000) first defined the individual as a being with rights; the idea of the subject signifies transformation, self-creation and access to self and remains associated with social and cultural struggles, the new social movements and collective actions that give expression to demands for meaning and recognition. For Alain Touraine, as for Michel Wieviorka (2008a), the notion of subject must be conceptualised in conjunction with modernity; individuals and groups are confronted by multiple forms of domination and conflict and the notions of subject and social movement are absolutely crucial to any attempt to explain the association of social conflict and the capacities for mobilising social, cultural and symbolic resources in a given society. More specifically in Western European countries, as Robert Castel shows (Chapter 3), we have moved from a modernity organised on the basis of interlocking collective structures to a ‘disorganised’ form of modernity resulting from the destabilisation of the national-welfare state and the erosion of the bodies responsible for collective regulation. According to Robert Castel (2009), this once again raises the question of economic and social solidarity, along with that of access to social rights. After all, inequalities in access to social rights have proliferated



european and chinese sociologies: a new dialogue5

in recent years, and the person ‘without rights or entitlements’ has gradually emerged, raising very serious questions about the principles of democracy. The relationship between the constitutional state and the welfare state then becomes strained, particularly when the welfare state is weakened by precarisation, racial discrimination and the curtailment of social protection. The individual’s social independence is called into question and the systems of collective regulation that produce social citizenship are destabilised by a dynamic of decollectivisation or re-individualisation. Social ownership and self-determination then emerge as major issues. As a result, it is no longer possible to consider the question of domination in the singular (Chapter 5), since that would presuppose the existence of a unified social system. Rather we have to think in terms of multiple forms of domination, some common, others less common. As contemporary societies become increasingly complex and the apparatuses of domination become increasingly diverse, individual biographies are becoming increasingly discontinuous and increasingly less governed by collective regulations. Biographies are becoming more complex and cosmopolitan, contributing to the production of plural identities; individuals are increasingly moving in social spaces shot through with contradictory demands and constraints and within which they face a plurality of normative orders; as a result, they are put to the test in double-bind situations. As processes of social and moral downgrading have developed in societies characterised by wage insecurity, so over the past 20 years intermediate spaces have opened up and proliferated, in which the effects of the blurring of the boundaries between the various normative orders can be managed collectively on the basis of liminal processes of socialisation and the creation of cultures of uncertainty (Roulleau-Berger, 2007). In attempting to conceptualise modernity in Chinese society, we are encouraged to take as a starting point another form of modernisation, namely the post-Maoist economic and social transition (Chapter 4), which contains elements of modernisation without being reducible to it and elements of development without being limited to it. The process of social transition is described by Sun Liping (2007) as having its own logic and its own procedures, in which individuals develop strategies and tactics as they involve themselves in actions that are practical and situated in the context of Chinese civilisation both past and present. More specifically, the social transition can be conceptualised in conjunction with two other types of transformations: the transformation

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of an agricultural society into an industrial society and the transformation of a traditional society into a modern society. Finally, Sun Liping shows how the transition process must be linked to the industrialisation and globalisation processes if we are to understand the massive changes taking place in Chinese society. He develops a theory of social transition as a ‘phenomenon of communist civilisation’, civilisation being defined here as a value system governing the functioning of a specifically Chinese form of life in society. How is this transition to be characterised? Li Peilin and Li Wei (Chapter 2), taking the example of migrant workers, show how increasingly pronounced economic differences are developing between urban and rural areas and how a plurality of interests and values is being constructed. Indeed, the process of social polarisation has developed very rapidly over the last ten years in a society in transition, in which integration occurs predominantly through entry into the market economy, from which part of the population is distanced, both economically and socially (Li Peilin, 2008). As a result, the migrant has become a truly emblematic figure for all those seeking to understand the processes of reconfiguration and segmentation in labour markets and, more generally, the question of stigmatisation and resistance in Chinese society. The processes of socialisation migrants undergo constitute a degraded variant of forms of affiliation and social and economic distancing specific to Chinese society. They suffer the effects of new forms of everyday domination and discrimination in Chinese labour markets, but Li Peilin and Li Wei also show how migrant workers turn themselves into actors capable of circulation, action, mobilisation and reflexivity, depending on their social, economic and symbolic resources. Although Chinese society is ‘in transition’, it is also, like European societies, very much influenced by globalisation, while at the same time experiencing its own particular changes, and in particular its own ruptures, which are also influencing the rest of the world. Like European countries, China is fully engaged in the process of globalisation, from which have emerged phenomena of deterritorialisation/ reterritorialisation that reveal disjunctions and associations between social, political, economic and symbolic spaces of variable legitimacy. Saskia Sassen (2006, 2007) shows how spatio-temporal frameworks and normative orders are becoming diversified, reconfigured and recodified beyond the boundaries of nation states as a result of internationalisation and cosmopolitisation (Chapter 6). The migratory flows of the new ‘elites’ within the international space, as well as those of



european and chinese sociologies: a new dialogue7

‘discredited’ populations, and the increasingly visible presence of international entrepreneurs in different countries actively contribute to what Saskia Sassen calls the proliferation of new arrangements and to the destabilisation of established institutional arrangements between territory, authority and rights, producing emerging territorialities and associations that are neither exclusively national nor exclusively global. We are being induced to think globally or, as Michel Wieviorka (2008a) puts it, ‘simultaneously to conceptualise processes of deconstruction and reconstruction and logics that are both internal and transnational, national and global’. 2.  Class, the Individual and Society The question of social stratification has always been central to sociology. For Chinese sociologists, it cannot be dissociated from that of the market economy. Since the economic reforms, Chinese society has become increasingly stratified and is becoming more and more diversified in terms of the constitution of socio-occupational categories. Sociologists at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Beijing) have identified 10 social categories that can be allocated to one of four social classes (Lu Xueyi, 2002; Li Peilin, 2005; Li Chunling, 2005): the upper, middle and working classes and individuals who are economically inactive, unemployed or on short time. This emphasises how the social structure has become more complex, social groups more differentiated, social trajectories more diverse and access to social mobility unequal. Income inequalities between the various social classes are widening. Sun Liping (2003) advances the notion of the ‘fractured society’, emphasising the speed of the process of social polarisation that has developed over the last ten years. Thus the structure of Chinese society has changed radically since the economic reforms began. Li Chunling (Chapter 7) shows how social mobility pathways were to diversify from 1978 and the structural barriers to mobility were to be redefined. She also shows how economic capital played a crucial role in social mobility prior to 1949 but became a negative factor between 1949 and 1980 and how cultural and economic capital have come to play a decisive role in contemporary modes of constructing social mobility. She explains the paradox of the reforms, which have increased the opportunities for mobility and at the same time made the boundaries between the social groups clearer. In the course of the transition from the

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planned to the market economy, the social structure has been reconfigured as a result of changes to the economic system and institutions and to the relationship between the state and the market. Li Lulu (2006) advances the hypothesis that social heritage is a determining factor in the restructuring of social relations, in the development of the market economy and in the weakening of the state through the construction of redistributive systems that produce highly active and permanent processes of social reproduction in labour markets and in the wider society. We will see (Chapter 10) how the emergence of the middle class in a society in process of modernising and moving towards the market economy very closely reflects the structural evolution of society, how the middle classes have very quickly become stratified as part of the general process of stratification in Chinese society and how an awareness of belonging to the middle classes is developing. The circumstances under which the middle classes emerged in China induce us to examine once again the nature of the social and symbolic boundaries between the classes. Research on the middle classes in France, in contrast, reveals that it is not so much the homogenisation of lifestyles that explains the process leading to the consti­ tution of a much expanded middle class, but rather the proliferation of and changes in modes of differentiations and the consequent strengthening of the position of the elites and dominant classes in French society (Bidou, 2003). Catherine Bidou (Chapter 8) shows how representations and definitions of the middle classes were formed and how they have been abandoned and then reclaimed in recent years (Van Zanten, 2001; Chauvel, 2006). She analyses how the burgeoning middle classes developed ‘usurpation’ strategies that have been thwarted to some extent by the dominant classes, who have reinforced the collective, social and institutional barriers in order to maintain their own position. The return in France to a sociology of social class is taking place in conjunction with an investigation of the individuation of social practices, which are being linked together by analyses of the construction of social inequalities. For example, the processes leading to the hyperindividuation of social practices reveal the inequalities in access to symbolic and moral goods. For more than twenty years, the contemporary individual has been at the heart of sociological investigation in Europe, and particularly in France; in Chinese sociology, on the other hand, that individual has been scarcely visible. Alain Ehrenberg (2010) shows in what respects the way of considering subjectivity and affectivity is a



european and chinese sociologies: a new dialogue9

social idea and that autonomy must be approached as a question of change in the institutional min; he (Chapter 9) explains that the spread of the values associated with individual autonomy to the whole of social life reinforces the tendency in Western societies to envisage social life in terms of the ego and the self; he argues in favour of recognising ‘that society has its own authority’ that produces instituted and differentiated forms of access to autonomy. In Chinese sociology, the question of individuation has not yet been formalised as such; investigation of the construction of the individual is conducted separately from analyses of social class and focuses on the problematic of guanxis (interpersonal relations). Yang Yiyin (2008) shows how different theories of guanxis have developed in cultural and intercultural psychology; in particular, she advances the hypothesis that a double ‘we’ is created as an order of interactions is constructed. Yang Yiyin (Chapter 11) explains how, in order to define an interpersonal guanxi, consideration has to be given to the legacy of the kinship regime and relationships of mutual trust and obligation. The ‘we’ is produced, on the one hand, by guanxis that define the particular boundaries of the ‘ego’ – more specifically what Fei Xiao Tong called the chaxu geju1 – and, on the other hand, by social categorisations, identifications and affiliations. The relationship between the individual and society is concep­ tualised in different terms in Chinese and European sociology. The question of social stratification emerges as very central in Chinese society today, which in no way excludes that of the construction of the individual. We could say that, in European societies, the converse is the case, with the question of the individual possibly emerging as more vital. 3.  State, Democracy and Citizenship In Western European societies, the question of the state and democracy is a central one, directly connected as it is to the construction of 1   Fei Xiaotong (1985) offers a vivid explanation of the meaning of ‘chaxu geju’: ‘Our structure is not a collection of neatly stacked bundles of logs, but rather circles formed by a pebble as it ricochets across the surface of an expanse of water. Each individual is the centre of a series of circles set in motion by his or her social influence. Wherever there is a rebound, there is a link. Each individual sets different circles in motion at different times and in different places.’

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inequalities and the decline of the Institutions that produce social rights. After all, inequalities of access to social rights have proliferated in recent years, leading to the gradual emergence of the individual ‘without rights or entitlements’ and thereby calling into question the very principles of democracy. In Eastern European societies, the tran­ sition to the market economy has led to economic decline and a ‘collapse of equality’, as Anna Krasteva puts it (Chapter 12). Solidarity is less evident than conflict, particularly the symbolic and ethnic ones running though the post-socialist societies of Eastern Europe. While social conflicts exist, they are not conceived as playing a central role. This raises the question of the moral insecurity and mistrust that have insinuated themselves into social interactions, particularly between those without access to a job and those who have one. Although this question of the ‘crisis of trust’ also exists in Eastern societies, it exists in different forms in Western European and China (Sun Liping, 2007), leading us to reconceptualise the question of the social construction of conflict and trust in capitalist and post-socialist societies (Krasteva, Todorov, 2004). This in turn raises the question of the new economy of legality and of the process of legitimation in contemporary societies posed by Jacques Commaille (Chapter 15), who emphasises the mobilisation of law and justice as an expression of a new regime of top-down regulation focused on the rights of minorities and vulnerable populations (Commaille, 2007). From this point of view, justice is playing an increasingly important role in political regulation in European societies and is contributing to the production of new forms of governance. In this approach that is both bottom-up and top-down, Jacques Commaille regards law and justice as resources drawn on by individual and collective actors at both national and international level. He shows how the cases of China and of Europe can be seen as laboratory experiments that open up theoretical perspectives on ways of conceptualising ‘transnational economies of legality’. In Chinese sociology, the question of the relationship between state and society is assuming considerable importance. It is posed in various forms, with a variety of theoretical approaches being adopted, some linked to the question of power, others to that of modes of governance, the construction of the public space and access to social rights. In China, after all, the right to own property has been reformed several times, and as far as access to social rights is concerned, the system of social protection can indeed be said to be in crisis, particularly in terms



european and chinese sociologies: a new dialogue11

of welfare cover, unemployment insurance, health care and pensions. Even though the government has introduced reforms, there are very pronounced inequalities of access to social rights between rural and urban populations. The Chinese state at central level lays down the forms of governance to be adopted in tackling these social questions. Local government is also involved in developing instruments of social solidarity. Li Youmei (Chapter 13) raises the question of the governance of communities and neighbourhoods as the bases of Chinese civil society. She explains how economic and political actors mobilise in order to manage structural tensions between the old and new systems by putting in place innovative policies and how peasants protect themselves by drawing on ancient local knowledge. These different categories of actors located in different parts of the urban space and institutions are producing new forms of collective action. Li Youmei (2007) shows how the repercussions of the economic reforms on city administration and the decentralisation of governmental competences have led to the emergence of new modes of governance that are being jointly constructed by different interest groups at neighbourhood level, by state representatives and by city dwellers. In doing so, she reveals how a civil society is being constituted in the urban areas of contemporary China. The constitution of a civil society also means the formation of the public space. While the public space and the political space tended to flow together (Zhang Jing, 2008), the two spaces are now very slowly moving apart, leading to the gradual emergence of individuals with rights and entitlements and the ability to operate autonomously and take responsibility in a developing public space. In the course of producing public judgements, agreements and disagreements are being constructed around moral and social norms and norms and orders of recognition are becoming differentiated as a result of the diversification of legitimation criteria, actions, practices and discourses and coming into conflict with each other around the distribution of the ‘common weal’. Taking as a starting point an analysis of property right disputes, Zhang Jing (Chapter 17) encourages us to re-examine one of the fundamental theoretical questions in sociology, namely social order, by introducing the notion of dual integration of social order, composed of both ‘property rights’ and ‘division of benefit’. The central question is the influence of dual integration of social order on the interaction between the legitimation of social identity and institutional structure. Guo Yuhua (Chapter 16) theorises the question of governance by developing an

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approach that is both ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’, based on an analysis of state rituals as techniques for maintaining power put in place as part of the micro-management of relations between state and peasants (Guo Yuhua, 2000). Guo Yuhua analyses the way in which ordinary peasants allowed themselves to be persuaded by the revolutionary ideal and enforced involvement in Chinese political life. State rituals became a substitute for governance and were based on the rituals of everyday peasant life in order to produce action norms that were in evidence in the movements. Drawing on an analysis of the power of the ‘weak’, Guo Yuhua shows how individuals’ reflexive capacity is deployed in interactive situations and the various contexts of everyday social activity. This gives rise in turn to what Patrick Pharo (Chapter 18) describes as an everyday civic spirit, which denotes the day-to-day management of unequal, asymmetric social relations and raises the question of how to assess the legitimacy of a social and political order in Europe. While he demonstrates the extent to which this concept is closer to a vision of the legitimacy that served to guide ‘struggles for recognition’, he insists that it remains ambiguous if it is not linked to the question of legitimate rights and democracy at a time when the individual and human rights are being sanctified. In a context in which multiple sources of vulnerability and dependency are emerging in European societies, Patrick Pharo (2006) raises the question of experiences of humiliation within the relative democratic ‘good fortune’ of European societies by proposing to examine ‘the democratic clear conscience as a source of totalitarianism’. Recognition is a coveted good in these societies, and Jean-Paul Payet (chapter 14) shows how, in France, new rights – for users of institutions, minorities and groups suffering discrimination – become established by opening up areas of recognition while at the same time helping to reinforce processes of segregation and discrimination (Payet, Battegay, 2008). A semantics of recognition is sweeping through the public, political and legal space, while at the same producing increasingly strong and discrete hierarchies between different orders of recognition with varying degrees of legitimacy. In European societies, the state is a supplier of recognition, but account has to be taken of a diversity of sources of legitimation in spaces with varying degrees of legitimacy. In China however, we will see with Shen Yuan in particular that the public space is not being overrun with a semantics of recognition, even though the ‘transition’ has encouraged the reconfiguration of orders of recognition and different social groups are mobilising in the



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public space in order to give voice to strong demands for recognition (Chapitre 19). Conflicts around recognition are expressed in controlled forms, particularly the resistance movements among peasants, works and city dwellers linked to the middle classes. Shen Yuan (2008) also shows how a citizens’ movement linked to the right of ownership has been formed in order to give voice to the demand of the urban middle classes in China for civil and political rights. The emergence of owners’ movements has revealed tensions and social conflicts in the public space that have led city dwellers linked to the emerging middle classes to mobilise in increasingly organised ways. The development among city dwellers of the skills required to mobilise for the purpose of resistance around the question of the right of ownership reflects the way in which new forms of accessibility to the public space and new demands for public recognition are being constructed. 4.  Economic Change and New Social Inequalities In Europe, the traditional wage relationship has become fragmented as a result of fluctuating but persistent unemployment, the increased vulnerability of jobs in those sectors exposed to competition and the development of atypical employment forms. Michel Lallement (Chapter 20) focuses on the changes in industrial relations, which are reflected in a weakening of trade union power, the spread of forms of work organisation requiring flexibility and employee involvement and the decentralisation of productive structures. The normalisation of flexibility appears to be fundamental to the construction of social Europe; however, contemporary economies do not of course follow the same guiding principles and models as they develop and change. Thus what we are witnessing is not so much deregulation pure and simple as a proliferation of new rules and, above all, new sources of regulation. At national and international level, procedural rules are negotiated  or even imposed; at the same time, however, local actors adapt these normative models in order to coordinate different forms of local regulation in response to demands for flexibility. David Marsden (Chapter 22) takes a similar line as he shows how deregulation and privatisation in the European Union have considerably reduced the role of the state. However, he also shows how the contractual form (employed or self-employed) is the result of choices made by workers and employers. Employment relationships have been redefined in European labour markets (Marsden, 2007). However, as Marsden

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suggests, the regulation of employment and employment relationships are also changing considerably in ‘the socialist market economy’, where ‘the area of acceptance within which workers accept that their employers should manage their work and complete their contracts’ is also becoming blurred and where the implicit and explicit rules governing work are less and less observed. Catherine Paradeise (Chapter 21) asks us to reconsider the dialectic between autonomy and control in employment relationships. She sees the ‘golden age’ of industrial relations as a time that saw the birth of ‘industrial democracy’ based on pay bargaining and concomitant with political democracy. This created a common focus for the individual and collective negotiation of workers’ rights against the background of industrialisation, with individual and collective actors working to produce agreed conventions, rules and principles (Paradeise, 2008). The process of constructing the wage-labour nexus also had its origins in disputes linked to inequalities in rights and status and in the trade union movement and its struggles. In Europe, the industrial relations system developed with the emer­ gence  of collective actors with a shared awareness of their situations (Lallement, 2007). Although industrial relations in Europe have been restruc­tured, with collective forms of regulation having been weakened, the forms of capitalism specific to the emerging countries are not necessarily associated with the forfeiture of workers’ rights and the loss of collective resources. In China, however, there is a question around the distribution of power between market forces, the forces of the state and the forces of civil society, i.e. around the conditions under which collective actors are produced. Enzo Mingione and Jonathan Pratshke (Chapter 24) also shows how the effects of industrial restructuring in Europe have disrupted the division of labour and caused mass unemployment, creating insecurity and instability for young people and forcing them into various forms of illegal or informal work (Mingione, 2003). In Southern Italy, for example, the combination of a high female employment rate and a high unemployment rate has given rise to new forms of poverty. In societies in which capitalism has been restructured on the basis of flexible and unstable employment, structural tendencies can be observed that reinforce social inequalities, with the result that the least well qualified are permanently excluded from the so-called legitimate labour markets and economies. Individuals trapped in unemployment oscillate between engagement and disengagement with regard to social norms. These societies, characterised as they are by ‘wage insecurity’, give rise



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to different levels of access to public recognition, thereby producing moral uncertainty. In investigating the question of economic change and the new social inequalities, Chinese sociologists take the transition as their starting point. There is a fundamental distinction to be made between local and national markets and between rural and urban markets if we are really to understand how the process of economic transformation works in China. Liu Shiding (2006) has shown how, from the second half of the 1990s onwards, the construction of local markets took place through the transformation of the various regimes of collective and state ownership, which then evolved towards private ownership. ‘Small town and village enterprises’ absorbed a high share of the surplus agricultural labour force. However, their absorptive capacity eventually came up against its limits, and it was at this point that migration to the cities began. Liu Shiding (Chapter 23) then explains how urban labour markets have become segmented, with the least favoured segments being occupied by low-skill, poorly paid workers whose working environment is unfavourable and who are forced into horizontal mobility and suffer institutional, cultural and economic discrimination. In economic sociology, the question of discrimination is also approached in terms of the inequalities between men and women, as it is in European sociology; it has been a subject for investigation for thirty years. Tong Xin (Chapter 25) shows how any investigation of the question of production and reproduction in gender relations has to take account of the state, the market and the family. During collectivisation, women were instrumentalised under the cover of emancipation and were objects of alienation. Socialist ideology includes a process that is alienating for women, whereby they are always allocated to inferior positions to those of men in the labour market. In labour markets in transition, women are subjected to physical and moral pressures and become discredited as a result of domination-subordination relationships in the family and the wider society. However, they have also developed resistance strategies and captured spaces in which they can enjoy a certain autonomy. Finally, Chinese sociologists have also tackled the question of inequality of access to employment. From the beginning of the 1990s onwards, moreover, as state enterprises began to be reduced in size, the private sector became increasingly important and the growth in rural employment began to slow down, different forms of unemployment began to emerge, along with different categories of unemployed people,

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such as the xiagang (workers made redundant by their enterprise but receiving allowances, doing temporary work and continuing to benefit from the social welfare provided by their work unit) (Tong Xin, 2008), the ligangs (workers who had left their jobs for personal reasons without having terminated their employment contracts), young graduates and young migrants. This new economic situation has also led to the creation of massive numbers of jobs in the informal sector, taken mainly by migrants, who can also be described as ‘semi-unemployed’. This in turn leads to the formation of a stratum at the bottom of society in which unemployed individuals and families without work develop resistance strategies in order to cope with the effects of the transition and survive by relying on family solidarity. Conclusion Chinese sociologists seem to find a point of equilibrium that moves constantly between avoidance of universalistic stances and impris­ onment in particularism. Where the binary pairs of individualism/ holism, objectivism/subjectivism, micro-sociology/macro-sociology have played an active role in Western European sociology, Chinese sociology has avoided binary thinking in favour of pluralism. Questions might reasonably be asked, incidentally, about the extent to which Chinese sociology questions the paradigms of Western sociology. Engagement with Chinese sociology enables European sociologists to embark on a process of epistemological reconfiguration that allows them to distance themselves from their conceptual habitus and to understand more clearly why and how we construct and deploy our paradigms. To initiate a dialogue between European and Chinese sociologists is to open up new horizons for Western thought in a context of economic and cultural globalisation and to unpick the narratives about our Western societies; the objective is to embark on a process of epistemological reconfiguration with the aim of deconstructing reality on the basis of different ways of dividing up the world, proceeding in small stages and via a series of short journeys, thereby escaping the contingency of what Kuhn (1983) called ‘normal science’. Sociological thinking, like all thinking in the social sciences, is linked to the evolution of the Western society from which it emerged [Kilani, 2009]. While the growing pluralisation of contemporary societies calls into question the very idea of society as a narrative linked to



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that of modernity, particularly European modernity, Western thought has continued to perceive itself as the universal mediator for all other histories (Chinese, Indian, Arab, African, Brazilian, etc.). Various forms of academic colonialism marked the development of sociological thinking. Michel Wieviorka (2008b) also points up the dynamism of Chinese sociology, defining it as neither aligned nor locked in, evading both the largely Anglo-Saxon forms of intellectual domination and the temptation to turn in on itself. How are we to address the plurality of narratives in contemporary societies? How is the hierarchy between Western societies and Asian or African societies constructed by colonialism to be broken down? As showed by Michel Wieviorka (conclusion) following on from these approaches, it seems to us less pertinent now to address the plurality of ‘provinces of knowledge’ than to confront the new centralities. The most pressing task, however, is to investigate the ways in which continuities and discontinuities, connections and disjunctions are formed between seats of knowledge located at different places in the world and potentially capable of bringing to light a transnational intermediate space that is both local and global. Over the past twenty years, it has become evident that one of the challenges facing sociology has been how to accord due recognition at international level to the knowledge produced as a consequence of decolonisation. In the wake of the decolonial critique of post-colonial studies, the aim of this book is to examine the question of the de-westernisation of knowledge in sociology (Roulleau-Berger, 2011). Translated by Andy Wilson

CHINESE SOCIOLOGY IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE Li Peilin Laurence Roulleau-Berger who I also known as Luo Lan – her Chinese name – asked me to write an introduction for European and Chinese Sociologies: a New Dialogue, from the perspective of sociologist circles in China. She envisions it as a story or a figure, i.e. a process in which the Chinese sociology begins to integrate into the world, and the international sociological circle begins to know China. At the beginning of the century, in 2006, according to the exchange agreement between the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) Luo Lan came for a whole year to China and worked as a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Sociology, CASS. Because I had an experience studying in France and was the Director of the Institute of Sociology in CASS, it was quite natural that we communicated a lot with each other. Luo Lan is a sociologist, Research Director at CNRS, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, University of Lyon 2. In 2006, Luo Lan told me that she wanted to work together with me, Guo Yuhua, Professor at Department of sociology Tsinghua University, Liu Shiding, Professor at Department of sociology Peking University to compile a book on Chinese sociology, and publish it in France. She wanted to do so because, from her point of view, China is undergoing significant changes, and Chinese sociologists have done many researches to reflect and analyze such changes. In France, however, the sociological circle knows almost nothing about Chinese sociology and many French sociologists are not even aware of the existence of Chinese sociology: it seemed that only sinologists were concerned about carrying out studies about China. I was very interested in her idea, but at the same time very doubtful about it, because I knew it would not be easy to make it happen. Yet, in 2008, the 500 pages book entitled The New Chinese Sociology was published by CNRS Press and received considerable response. To promote mutual communication after the publication of the book, Luo Lan invited all the authors to come to France for an international Conference on sociology held in Lyon and Paris, organized

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by CNRS Interdisciplinary Institute of Economic Sociology (LISE, Paris) in partnership with the CNRS Research Center Worlds and Dynamics of Societies (MODYS, Lyon). The Conference, which focused on the topic of China and internationalization of sociology, was attended by many Chinese, European and American sociologists and benefited of the presence of famous sociologists. This volume of European and Chinese Sociologies: the new dialogue was compiled from the papers and scripts of speeches presented at this Conference. This kind of dialogue, however, also revealed barriers of understanding and differences in culture and sociological tradition between the two sides. Since France is the homeland of sociology, French sociology is not new for Chinese scholars. For Chinese sociologists, Auguste Comte, Charles de Montesquieu, Alexis de Tocqueville, Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Maurice Halbwachs, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and so on are hallowed names of French classical sociology. France, especially during the 50s and 60s of the last century, was a rich soil for great thinkers and a wondrous land for Chinese scholars. Back then, Jean-Paul Sartre, Raymon Aron, Albert Camus, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Simone de Beauvoir launched heated discussions on existentialism, showing brilliance and wits; Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Claude Lévy-Strauss, and Louis Althusser, carrying the banner of structurism, represented a powerful new force in the circle of thinkers in France. However, for the Chinese sociological circle, since the death of Pierre Bourdieu, it seems that few Chinese scholars are informed of the latest developments of French sociology. There are two major causes of this situation: the limitations of Chinese sociology and the impacts of American sociology. Sociology was introduced in China at the end of the 19th century. In 1897, Yan Fu, a famous Chinese translator and scholar, translated into Chinese The Study of Sociology written by the British sociologist Spencer. In his work, sociology was translated into “science of group.” The thoughts of Western sociology served as the primary source of thinking for the spiritual leaders, including Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, etc., of China’s 1898 Reform Movement. China’s 1898 Reform Movement was a reform by learning from the West, which was similar to the Japanese Meiji Restoration (1868–1889). But the two movements produced completely different results. The Japanese Meiji Restoration has led Japan onto the road of modernization ever since, whereas China’s 1898 Reform Movement resulted in a failure. The failure, however, did not



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bring to an end the dissemination and development of sociology in China. In the first half of the 20th century, China witnessed the collapse of the Qing Dynasty, the melee among warlords, and the invasion by foreign enemies; but at the same time, in the cultural and academic fields, China saw surging trends of thoughts, waves of appeals, and the emergence of academic figures in large numbers. During that period, Chinese sociology underwent unusually fast development, and some research findings reached the highest level of that time. At that time, Chinese sociological scholars had acquired the qualities necessary for becoming academic masters: they had profound knowledge of the traditional Chinese culture, received formal education in western sociology, understood the frontline issues of western sociology and the reality in China, and cherished lofty aspirations of changing the Chinese society. Meanwhile, in the early days of the 20th century came a time of academic prosperity similar to the “Spring and Autumn” and “Warring States” Periods of ancient China. This kind of prosperity in the troubled days was brought by the following three main factors: firstly, against the backdrop of Western learning gradually spreading to the East and clash between the Western culture and the Oriental culture, Chinese scholars conducted unprecedented introspection and reflection of their traditional culture; secondly, at the time when China was invaded by big powers and suffered from national humiliations, various trends of thoughts were prevailing, Chinese people were developing a strong awareness of the necessity of reform, enlightenment and salvation, and revolutionary criticism, and counter-tradition became the mainstream; thirdly, there was a clear tendency of scholars becoming realistic and practical, and the primary academic subject was focused on social reconstruction. After the People’s Republic of China was founded in the middle of the 20th century, China was affected by the Soviet Union’s criticism of sociology as a “bourgeois discipline” and therefore abolished it as a university discipline in 1953. As a result, all sociologists in China changed their jobs and engaged in other disciplines. Interrupted for nearly 30 years, Chinese sociology did not come back until 1978 when China implemented the policies of reform and opening up to the outside world. From the resumption of Chinese sociology to its reconstruction today, another 30 years have passed, and it has developed at an unprecedented speed. At present, China has established its national academic organization for sociology – the Chinese Sociological Association(CSA), which has more than 20 subordinate professional

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committees for sociological studies, and convenes academic conference on sociology annually. Among Universities in China, there have been more than 200 departments of sociology and departments of social work; junior college students, undergraduates and graduate students of sociology have numbered over 10,000; Institutes of sociology at the provincial level or prefecture level have numbered over 50 nationwide. The rapid development of Chinese sociology in only 30 years, particularly in the past decade, was largely driven by the actual needs. Along with the rapid economic development in China, various social problems including employment, income distribution, social security, education, medical care, ecological environment, etc. are becoming increasingly noticeable and calling for solutions from sociologists. In terms of academic exchange between the Chinese sociological circle and the international sociological circle, China has translated almost all classical works of western sociology; for a writing that enjoys popularity in the West, its Chinese version will appear in the bookstore in China in the very year the original work is published; the sociology courses in universities also include the history of western sociological thoughts, which is being taught systematically from the classical age all the way to the modern times. Nevertheless, Chinese sociology, instead of being affected by a particular school of thoughts, adopts a practical attitude of “selective absorption,” i.e. taking in whatever is needed. Therefore, in China, the most common practice of writing a doctoral dissertation is to put forward a question at the beginning, illustrate the studies conducted by academic figures of western sociology on this question, and finally prove the hypothesis using survey data from Chinese experience. During such a process of analysis, theories and experience are often unrelated to each other. At the early stage of development following the resumption and reconstruction of Chinese sociology, the leading figure in this circle was Hsiao-Tung Fei, then director of the Institute of Sociology, CASS, and President of the Chinese Academy of Sociology. He belonged to the generation of sociologists that had become well-known in the 30s and 40s of the 20th century, and was a key figure that, after sociology had been interrupted in China for nearly 30 years, linked the sociological traditions in the early age with the new traditions after the reform and opening up. As a student of the British anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, Hsiao-Tung Fei wrote a doctoral dissertation entitled Peasant Life in China: A Field Study of Country Life in the Yangtze



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Valley, 1946, according to his survey of a village in the southern part of Jiangsu Province, China. The dissertation was highly praised by Malinowski, who believed it was a milestone for the application of anthropological research methods to a relatively developed region. Influenced by Hsiao-Tung Fei, the “community research method,” i.e. researching urban and rural communities by means of field work, became the primary method for sociological studies in China. This tradition imparted a distinct feature of valuing local survey to Chinese sociology, integrated sociology with anthropology and highlighted rural industrialization as the subject of study. In the 90s of the 20th century, as a batch of Chinese students that studied sociology in western countries, especially in the US, returned to China, “normalization” became the primary concept pursued by young scholars of sociology in China. “Normalization”, as it is called, is intended to make sociology a “normalized discipline” just like economics. Instead of depending entirely on opinions, judgments and deductions, it entails theoretical systems consisting of theorems, laws, rules and formulas. This kind of “normalization” bears a strong “Americanized” characteristic, which is to carry out massive-scale questionnaire surveys, establish all kinds of data models, conduct various kinds of quantitative analyses, and write sociological articles in a fixed format just like writing a natural science lab report. Sociological articles of this kind are called “foreign stereotyped writings” by the Chinese sociological circle, in comparison with the “stereotyped writing”, a prevailing writing style of the imperial examination in Ming and Qing Dynasties of China. This tendency of “normalization” became the mainstream tendency for the development of Chinese sociology and probably remains so even for today. With a strong hue of empirical induction, “normalization” is totally different from the tradition of deductive reasoning of Descartes to establish standard theories. During that period, the subject of sociological studies in China was “social transformation” which, however, refers not only to the processes of industrialization and urbanization, but also, and more importantly, to China’s marketization process. The theoretical interpretation by the New Institutionalism upon market transition has exerted significant influence on the Chinese sociological circle. Since the turn of the century, the rapid development of China’s economy and the fundamental changes of the social structure have intensified all kinds of social contradictions. Some sociologists in China seem to have developed a feeling that many problems now confronting them

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had already been encountered by masters of classical sociology when the western industrialization was ongoing at full swing. Therefore, they feel the need of “returning to classicism” to think through such problems. “Returning to classicism” in sociological theories, for example, to Karl Marx, to Emile Durkheim and to Max Weber, has become a new pursuit of some sociologists. This “returning to classicism” trend of thought is not simple theoretical retrospection. Behind it, there is a strong sense of social criticism, i.e. the notion that China’s social development lags far behind its rapid economic development; under the condition of strong state power and weak society in the past, social development was suppressed by state power, while in the new situation, social development was suppressed by both state power and market power. Chinese sociologists with this orientation believe it is necessary to return to classicism because, on the one hand, traditional American sociology has a too strong bias in favor of technical expertise, but lacks the awareness of major realistic problems; on the other hand, the problems that European sociologists are concerned about are totally different from those that Chinese sociologists are concerned about. Meanwhile, there are some other sociologists in China who believe it is necessary to strengthen the studies on the history of China’s sociological thoughts and social system, and to draw inspiration from Chinese history and culture, for example, the construction of the “theory of harmonious society.” To sum up, from the point of view of many Chinese sociologists, Western sociology has been divided into two different paths of learning. One is the technical-expertise path represented by American sociologists, aiming to make sociology a “normalized discipline” which can provide social technology to solve all kinds of specific problems. On that basis, “grand narrative” should be opposed; humanistic and social-philosophical touches should be eliminated; the greatest accomplishment in learning is to become an expert on a specific matter or in a specific field of studies, and there is no need for any lofty talk about the scholars’ mission to influence or change the society. The other is the path of thinking innovation represented by European sociologists. They are in pursuit of conceptual and theoretical innovations and call for constant provision of new thoughts and perspectives on the interpretation of social operation. Therefore, they are required to have humanistic concern, the esprit of social criticism, and the imaginative power in terms of sociology. This is why great scholars of sociology in Europe are also thinkers. In this context, there have been some tension



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and misunderstandings in the dialogue between Chinese sociolo­ gists and their western counterparts. On the one hand, they find that the complicated researches conducted by scholars in the technicalexpertise path lack “realistic and social meaning” and are hard to understand. On the other hand, because they have been accustomed to the inductive methodology that starts from empirical survey materials, they are not used to the way of deductive reasoning used by European scholars in the path of thinking innovation to interpret the reality starting from the complex clarification of conceptions. Against the background of globalization, however, both the channel and the scope of the dialogue between the Chinese sociological circle and the international sociological circle have been greatly expanded. In China, there are numerous international sociological seminars on various topics taking place every year. For example, my workplace, the Institute of Sociology, CASS, holds bilateral sociological seminars between China and Australia, China and UK, China and France, China and Russia, China and India, China and Sweden, China and Norway, etc. on a regular basis. In recent years, there are two sociological dialogues that have aroused the interest of Chinese sociologists: one is the exchange among East Asian sociologists, most of whom are from China, Japan and Korea. This is because these countries, which are historically included in the circle of Confucian culture and are latecomers striving for modernization or on their way there, have many common concerns; the other is the sociological exchange among the so-called “BRIC” (Brazil, Russia, India and China). This is because all of these countries are undergoing fast development and have a large population and territory, and therefore have many common and similar research subjects. The rapid development of China has provided some new experience in the world’s history of modernization. We may call it the “China’s experience,” of which the interpretation has provided great stimulation for the development of sociology, because the “China’s experience” has many new characteristics that distinguish itself from the existing modernization experience. The first characteristic is the population it involves. Bring a population of 1.3 billion to modernization is an unprecedented experience in the world’s history of modernization. So far, the total population of all developed countries has been less than 1.3 billion. It is difficult to predict how the great social changes of a society of 1.3 billion people would impact the economic and political system of the world. What is more,

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these changes are taking place at a speed so fast that it is far beyond any prediction. The second characteristic is the unbalanced development of China. Against the background of globalization, the international economic and social pattern of core-states semiperipheral areas peripheral areas has also influenced the regional pattern of China’s inland. In China, there was a concurrency of three phases of development, i.e. the concurrency of the capital accumulation phase at the initial stage of industrialization, the industrial upgrade phase at the middle stage of industrialization, and the structural transformation phase at the later stage of industrialization. Due to this characteristic, during the process of modernization, China was exposed to traditional risks such as various natural disasters and absolute poverty; modern risks such as unemployment, conflicts between capital and labor, gap of wealth, and environmental pollution; and new risks such as financial crisis, food safety, and ecological change. In China, some big cities are rapidly catching up with those in developed countries in terms of the level of development, while some remote rural villages are lagging behind by dozens of years or even a century. The third characteristic is the synchronization of the market transition with the social transformation. On the one hand, China’s economic system was transformed from planned economy into socialist market economy. On the other hand, China’s social structure was transformed from an agricultural, rural, and closed or half-closed society into an industrial, urban, and open society. At the beginning of the reform and opening up, the synchronization of the two transformations was mainly reflected in the fact that the economic system reform pushes forward the transformation of the social structure and makes up for the costs of the Institutional transition with its benefits. At present, however, as the gradual system reform, which was easy at the beginning but became increasingly difficult over time, comes to a new stage, the structural transformation has formed a counterforce to the Institutional transition. In light of this situation, we should not only pay more attention to the coordination of interests and social justice in the reform, but also expand it from the economic sphere to the social and political arenas. In China, the synchronization of the market transition with the social transformation has also made the system clashes and structural conflicts interwoven with each other during the course of development.



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The fourth characteristic is the particularity of the transformation of the population structure. China has been transformed from a country with high birthrate, high mortality, and high natural growth rate into one with low birthrate, low mortality and low natural growth rate. China’s birth control policy has led to a major decline in the population growth, and has guaranteed that more economic output are used to improve the living standard. On the other hand, the policy has greatly accelerated the aging of population, which has appeared even in some rural areas that have not yet become rich. In particular, the new generation of only children born in the 80s of the 20th century, also known as the “post-80s generation,” is very special compared with their elder generation, in terms of their life experience, family environment, and social background. However, this generation will navigate the giant ship of China to the future. I hope this volume of sociological dialogues will serve as a window for China to know the outside world and vice versa, and will promote the exchange and development of the international sociology. Finally, I would like to extend my gratitude to Michel Wieviorka, Professor at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Director of the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (Paris), President of the International Sociological Association from 2006 to 2010; he has fulfilled his duty with a great sense of mission – for his great, continuous efforts to integrate Chinese sociology into the international sociological circle, and for the wonderful epilogue he wrote for The New Chinese Sociology and this New Dialogue.

PART one

SOCIETIES, MODERNITIES AND GLOBALIZATION

CHAPTER ONE

MODERNITY AND MODERNIZATION Alain Touraine

1. Sociology may be gradually weakening in the USA and fragmenting in Europe, but it has not changed direction for a long time, since it has always resisted the lure of economic rationalism. It saw the influence of Marxist thinking increase at the very time that rejection of the Soviet model was weakening trade unions and Communist parties. This led to a decline in concrete analyses and in many cases – in France, for example – resulted in the dominance of an ideology rather than a theory. During certain periods, from 1969 to 1974 and from 1981 to 1983, an authoritarian form of leftism even spread through French and some other universities. It should be said that a purely critical sociology, which accuses the social sciences of being in thrall to the dominant groups in society, is self-destructive. It allowed the names of a few personalities to shine brightly, but left scorched earth in its wake. A very similar observation can be made with regard to Latin America, where an extreme form of dependency theory reduced collective action to guerrilla warfare, which was always external to the world of the peasants and workers in whose name it was being waged. The figure of Che Guevera is both that of a martyr and that of a foreign leader who remained alien to the social realities of Bolivia, where he had launched his guerrilla war. Efforts are being made in various countries to renew sociological thinking. New ideas are emerging from well-established centres of research, such as the LSE in London, Yale University in the US and the University of São PaÕlo in Brazil. These traditional centres of research sit comfortably alongside new, recently created centres, such as Center of Sociological Analysis and Intervention (CADIS) in Paris, at New York University and in the University of Bicocca in Milan. These Institutions are seeking to go beyond the hasty interpretation of surveys which, having been inadequately designed, seem to gather only

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observation material. However, I find it difficult to believe that the renewal of sociology can take place only at national or local level. like other social sciences, sociology has to give priority, at least for a certain time, to global analyses (as economics already does), to investigations of communications networks and to the evolution of relentless consumption and of the mass media. This in no way means that we have to believe in the emergence either of a global sociology or – even less likely – of a global society. Quite simply, it is essential in most countries to start from an analysis of globalisation in its various aspects in order subsequently to focus on its links with other levels of analysis. Thus it is by combining thinking and research from various parts of the world that sociology might be most effectively reconstructed. Latin-American thinking is less vigorous than three or more decades ago and the legacy of Soviet thinking is disappearing of its own accord. It is in Asia that new intellectual and cultural intellectual phenomena are most obviously emerging, first in Japan, then in Korea and Taiwan and, lastly, in India, which in the recent past played an eminent role in the sociology of development. More recently, China, freed – in part at least – from the official thinking, that occupies such an important place economically at the global level, is very rapidly developing analyses that we will come across as we proceed. Even though studies of the minorities that exist in many countries can produce some important findings and breathe new life into multiculturalism which, after a decade of strong influence, has been seriously weakened by the scale of the wars that have been unleashed in the name of cultural differences, the importance of the political and religious forces that have been mobilised in both the Islamic world and in the USA makes studies whose scope is deliberately limited to ‘minorities’ unacceptable. Too frequently, however, the globalised world is defined in such a way as to include just the United States, Western Europe and the major Commonwealth countries. Such a definition has long been too narrow and even geographically wrong. Japan has been part of the world of the major developed countries for a long time; Korea is already a major industrial power, and will be even more important in the future, when it is reunified. Finally, and above all in these early years of the 21st century, China from now onwards and, in the near future, India as well, will move further and further up the development league tables, by virtue of both the speed of their development and the richness of their



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cultures. The notion that the West has a monopoly over modernisation has never been acceptable and today can no longer even be defended. Rapid changes are also taking place outside Asia. Brazil is emerging as a major country and is already influencing the global balance of power. The Arab world, once colonised, is now protesting vigorously against the privileges of its former colonisers and the whole of the Muslim world is calling in the strongest possible terms for its freedom, so long destroyed by dictators, to be defended. The marginality imposed by the global banking and economic systems, which has its base in the West, is felt most keenly not in the large emerging countries but rather in medium-sized, non-European countries, where the fear of remaining outside the protection of the Americans or the Europeans and becoming dependent on the new giants is greatest. However, not all countries produce their own particular social or economic thinking, even when their influence is universally acknowledged. Many wish simply to be incorporated into the Western world, whose citizens enjoy both wealth and freedom and where the former colonisers are inclined to help them, particularly if they continue to use their language. After the period of national liberation movements, these now independent countries often seek to maintain privileged relations with the former colonial powers. Thus it is difficult or even impossible to define the world that is supposedly united by economic globalisation. No country identifies completely with another country more powerful than itself, except for the ruling elites who try to identify fully with the rich elites of more powerful countries. What we are experiencing, rather, is the juxtaposition of economic integration with a complex cultural life made up of elements from different cultures, with local or national traditions proving to be more resilient in the private sphere than in public life. If this juxtaposition were to become more widespread, there would no longer be any conflict between economic globalisation and respect for cultural differences. However, entry into the world shaped by the richest countries tends to result in the wealthy identifying with a global culture, while the poor remain confined within local cultures, without forgetting those whose culture is being destroyed or proscribed by new economic and political giants. This brief description cannot in itself provide any response to the question of what possible combination of universal equality and cultural difference might be able to hold out against superficial Americanisation. The analysis has to be taken further; in particular, we need to define more precisely the limits of this

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universalism of which Europeans speak so readily but which has in the past served as a justification for colonial adventures, whether or not their purpose was primarily economic. Nor is it any more adequate to reduce the problem posed to the study of minorities and their rights, since the theme of minorities by itself signifies a general inferiority and, consequently, the isolation of these minorities in their cultural specificity, without them being able to take part in a society and, in particular, a political system that claim to uphold the principle of the universalism of human rights. It is not even sufficient, let it be said, to acknowledge the very great historical importance of China or India, cultures advancing from their pasts towards ever more significant positions within the global economic evolution that may eventually tip the balance of power within that economy towards the East. This more open position simply leaves unanswered the question of whether we should talk of different forms of modernity and, in consequence, abandon universalism, as was recommended for a time by those who, taking as a model the – admittedly moderate – Singapore dictatorship, spoke of Asian democracy. We must apply the same arguments to all countries in the world, whatever their past or present differences and creativity. One pronounced tendency at the moment is to embark on comparative studies with the aim of revealing fundamental differences between European and Asian cultures, like that the philosopher Julien rejected with profundity in the case of China. Nobody is in any doubt about the fundamental differences that exist between various cultures and within various parts of the world. However, such differences also exist within Europe and even within the USA. We need to distance ourselves more from the observable facts and develop a general interpretation that can be applied to all countries, from the richest to the poorest, from the most dominant to the most dominated. 2. For sociologists, modernity is not defined by rapid and constant change nor by Baudelaire’s more sophisticated characterisation of it as ‘eternity in the moment’. Such images may be sufficient in literary terms, but cannot be used to guide sociological research. Nor is modernity the triumph of rationality, as many economists would like to think, firstly for the simple reason that the word rationality has several meanings



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and that in fact this rationalist position leads to the adoption of an instrumental rationality that puts rationally constructed resources to work in support of causes and aims that are not necessarily rational. We need only to think of the extreme examples provided by wars. Consequently, I suggested a long time ago that modernity should be defined as acceptance of the universal as a principle for assessing human behaviour, at least in certain fundamental areas. Modernity refers firstly to the universalism of scientific thought. There is no English or Senegalese mathematics, no specifically Russian or South African calculations to be made when designing an automobile. Agreement on this is easily reached now, since even the vast majority of those who practice alternative forms of medicine have no hesitation in using hospital medicine when faced with a difficult problem and when they live within striking distance of hospitals and pharmacies. What is more difficult, and therefore more interesting and important, is the adoption of a universalist approach to the assessment of individual human beings. Modernity is above all else the recognition of universal human rights, which apply to all men and women, rich and poor, African or Scandinavian. As soon as we take the view that such and such a category of people do not enjoy equal rights, a clear distinction obviously has to be made between rights and empirical characteristics. Human beings are not all the same height or equally strong, they do not all live for the same length of time and do not occupy equal stations in life, but human rights apply to all equally. The universalism of political rights – one man, one vote – was criticised for a long time, but the main criticism quite rightly levelled at it, namely that women, along with most young people, did not have the right to vote, no longer applies, at least in those countries entitled to call themselves modern and that others actually do call modern. The caste system and the refusal to grant certain groups the right to vote are incompatible with modernity, which is the foundation of democracy, itself also based on the universalism of rights. In the 19th century, workers’ leaders and socialist politicians often attacked the restrictiveness of political rights. It is essential that I be able to vote; however, if I don’t have any means of subsistence, if I don’t have work or only exhausting work or if I’m forced to live on the streets by an economic crisis or a hurricane, am I really the equal of those who, being in possession of wealth or economic power, are able to satisfy needs I am unable to satisfy? They can even treat me like an object or a machine, whereas I have to show them boundless respect. These criticisms were of such substance that they

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led the industrialised countries, first and foremost Great Britain and Germany, to establish social protection systems at the end of the 19th century (in Germany during the Bismarck period). It was only much later, in the 1930s, that France and the USA joined these two pioneering countries and put in place the foundations of a system of social rights. In 1943 and 1945, first Britain and then France established social security systems that have been constantly expanded and now guarantee virtually the same level of security for all, even though inequality has not been fought strongly enough and eliminated. The end of the 20th century saw the emergence of even stronger criticisms of the system established by the French Revolution, in the shape of demands for cultural rights and respect of cultural identity which, for many people today, defines equality. However, as we know, this defence of cultural identity leads often to particularism or separatism, to isolation and thus to the rejection of diversity and of minorities, as happens in all countries subject to the authority of a single and compulsory religion. No problem has aroused greater passions than this one since the 1960s, and it continues to do so today. Some of the objections raised by this extended concept of the universalism of rights can be allayed by adopting what has now become an established form of statement: I recognise your right to defend and practice a religion or a certain type of physical anthropology, astrophysics or even history course, but on condition that you grant me the same freedom. I recognise the rights of your religion, which is not my own, but on condition that you allow each member of your church to leave it if he or she so wishes and that your religion does not impede freedom of choice, particularly of a spouse or place of residence. Most assuredly, we are a long way from achieving this level of objectivity on a global level. Today’s wars are for the most part cultural wars, in which followers of a religion or of a political regime reject another group’s religious or political concepts, because they claim for themselves a monopoly on rationality and modernity. This simple remark must be the starting point for a more sophisticated and also more realistic argument. Now the history of different countries and, particularly, of different cultures shows that processes of change are extremely diverse. It has been said that all roads lead to Rome. The same cannot be said of modernity: some roads turn their back on it, others go so far as to seek its destruction and even those roads that do lead to Rome follow different routes. The response to this objection is that a clear and deep distinction has to be made between modernity and the roads of modernisation. The



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principal reason for this is a simple one: contrary to the opinion of some, in fact just a few, the new is not built solely from the new but also from the old. No political or social reform can exclude references to earlier legislation and, even more importantly, to the use of the language that was the mother tongue of earlier generations. Thus a distinction has to be made between modernity, and the roads of modernisation of behaviour. If we focus solely on the diversity of modernisation processes, modernity ceases to exist and there is no universalist judgement. that can be applied to human rights; conversely, if modernity is regarded as the established property of a particular nation or of particular political or religious groups, the whole logic of modernity disappears. Those countries that were both the most industrialised and the leading colonial powers frequently defined themselves as modern and took it upon themselves to assist ‘savage’ or ‘primitive’ peoples on the road to modernity. Self-conceit of this kind, which regards human rights as the exclusive preserve of those who have established a society of a certain kind, can conceive of no other option for others than to enable them to draw closer to those who preceded them or dominate them. Today, we no longer accept that Great Britain, the USA or France are perfect exemples of modernity and of respect for human rights. France may well have issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789, but that is not sufficient reason to conclude that France’s behaviour and principles in Africa and elsewhere were consistent with those declarations. Contempt for their colonial subjects, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, Arabophobia and the notion that women are ‘naturally inferior’ are all powerful manifestations of destruction through pride and the overweening desire of the strongest to grant themselves the monopoly on modernity, that is universalism. It would be easy to advance the idea that the most powerful nations are often also those that have established their domination over a large part of the world or have systematically put to death those they regarded as radically different from themselves. The 20th century was dominated by regimes that rejected any kind of universalism and declared that only property owners were rational, that only men were capable of taking part in public affairs, that Jews were to be exterminated, that Arabs were inferior because they were incapable of working in the conditions required by the advanced countries, and so on. One is struck by the ease with which one group can declare that another group is not part of the ‘human race’, constitutes an inferior species or even has to be destroyed. Even today, such declarations are made in various parts of

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the world, where Jews were murdered in extermination camps, where Tutsis and some Hutus were murdered by the Hutu majority and where women have fewer rights than men, or even none at all. Thus the defence of the universalism of human rights is not a theme for a lecture or a catechism but an aspiration that has come up against the most insurmountable obstacles, with as many of the battles fought in its name being lost as won. It is by confusing a particular road to modernisation with modernity that such catastrophes are caused. All claims to have a monopoly on modernity are the worst enemies of modernity because they confuse universal principles with the particularism of their own existence. 3. Equally fraught with danger, but at the opposite extreme to all pretensions to a monopoly on modernity, is the tendency to identify a state, a government or country with a particularly road to modernisation, while excluding any reference to modernity. In other words, societies or political regimes that think that way of themselves give absolute power to the state to choose a policy for change that no longer has to share with others the universalist reference point of modernity. When we speak of nationalism or, in the most extreme cases, of totalitarianism, we are referring directly to this omnipotence of the state or even of a culture that become ends in themselves while disregarding all the possible powers of civil society which, for its part, defines itself primarily in terms of its relationship to modernity. These simple formulas, in which the state is associated with a particular road of modernisation and civil society is associated with modernity, highlight both the need for a dual reference point and the dangers of a divide between a statist and a social logic. In so doing, they clearly encapsulate the most serious problems, which are often also the most dramatic ones, posed by adopting modernity and modernisation as a dual reference point. The tendency of states to reject any universalist point of reference and to impose a vision that isolates one society from all other societies that have adopted modernity and a particular mode of modernisation as reference points brings with it all the dangers of an authoritarianism that utterly rejects universalism and thus any recognition of universal human rights. This is true of both ‘realpolitik’ and of modernising, state-controlled dictatorships. What was known as the Cold War



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denoted the formation of complete antimony between societies focused exclusively on their own modernisation, and thus also on the power of their own state, and other societies based on the universalist requirements of modernity but which were also seeking, under the pretext of modernity, to impose their own mode of modernisation, and hence their own interests and desire for domination, on the rest of the world. In the last 20 years, the main protagonists of the Cold War have grown closer together, although the opposition between them remains unchanged in its essence. Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union, has abandoned the totalitarian system but has invested all power in its state, which is led directly or indirectly by President Putin. In Russia’s efforts to rebuild its state, maintain its military power and play its part in the dialogue between the major powers, a position it holds by virtue of its nuclear force, Russian society has been subordinated to the will of the Russian state. Under the leadership of President Bush, the United States, for its part, took to extremes its identification of itself with modernity, to the point of launching a crusade. It has now regained some of the capacity for self-criticism that it needs, given its power, if it is not to fall into the trap of identifying just one country with universalism, a tendency I have already criticised. More recently, China has gradually moved away from the most violent aspects of its post-revolutionary system but continues to maintain strict control over all aspects of civil society. Although its political leaders allow demands or criticisms to be expressed at very local level, they vigorously oppose anything that might develop into a wider movement and could, in the name of the rights of civil society, challenge their own power. What might have seemed to be a simple interest in comparative studies between two major countries and two systems of government turns out, after all, to have wider implications that bring into play more general principles and, consequently, decisions that directly affect living conditions and, in particular, public freedoms in each society. Thus it is extremely important to launch an international study that might highlight the commonalities and differences between the current major models of development, i.e. those of the USA, Western Europe, China and Russia, as well as those of India and Brazil, the major emerging countries, whose likely future position on the spectrum ranging from the USA to China cannot yet be clearly discerned. To put it even more succinctly, sociologists and those who formulate national policies might wish to give top priority to an analysis not of international relations but of comparisons between the societal systems of the USA

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and  China. All major universities should ensure that study of these two  countries and of their mode of change plays a key role in their activities. These rapid analyses can be summarised further as follows. The kind of modernisation associated with the ‘developing’ world is characterised principally by a reliance on the state and the mobilisation of economic, social and cultural resources in order to create a certain type of change management. The concept of modernity, on the other hand, relies above all on the behaviour of individuals and of groups, not only as they relate to the state and its mode of modernisation but, even more directly, with modernity itself, as it manifests itself in laws that respect rights and, through them, the universalism of the human condition. However, it would be a mistake to view civil society and the notion of modernity as wholly positive and state-driven modernisation projects as wholly negative and based on authoritarian policies. Defence of liberties is not the responsibility of lawyers and intellectuals alone. In the relatively recent past, the fight against Nazism and the victory over it reached one of their highest points at the battle of Stalingrad, which probably played an even more important role than the Anglo-American landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944. The French case is very extreme. Although General de Gaulle was a defender of humanist values and the republican spirit, he was certainly acting in the name of the state as a real actor when he heaped criticism on civil society and on its citizens, both of whom seemed incapable of defending themselves. And it is true that all those who placed their trust in Marshal Pétain to limit the consequences of the French surrender were gravely mistaken, whereas the admittedly democratic argument put forward by de Gaulle in his appeal to the French people of 18 June 1940 was in fact based on a strategic assessment of an enemy that was decidedly more powerful and had rapidly gained mastery of both the air and the sea. All those, indeed the vast majority of countries, who admired General de Gaulle and agreed to grant him the power of a president elected on the basis of universal suffrage were aware of this life-saving yet dangerous separation between state and society. In Great Britain, the divide was even more obvious, since Churchill, who had contributed a great deal to the Allies’ victory, was rapidly voted out of office after the end of the war in favour of a much less prestigious Labour leader who had not played a mobilising role remotely comparable to that of Churchill but who was responding to popular demands for improvements in living conditions for the whole population. To look back even further into the past,



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it is absolutely legitimate to condemn Napoleon as a conqueror and dominator who was opposed by popular forces, particularly in Spain. However, it should not be forgotten that he was also a son of the French Revolution, a Jacobin, and that his civil code, imposed across a large swath of Europe, destroyed the power of oligarchies and monarchies by introducing legal and constitutional rules that sought to eliminate the arbitrariness and injustice created or sustained by the regimes that Napoleon fought against, particularly in the Balkans and in Italy. It would not be acceptable to be carried away by a superficial naivety that sees in the mechanisms of representative democracy nothing more than the necessary and successful application of the universalism of human rights. Special interests, the absence of a long-term perspective and sometimes also inadequate recognition of their national responsibilities have led many parliamentarians, intellectuals and opinion leaders to accept or even wish for surrender in situations in which the intransigence of military or civil leaders such as Cardinal Vichinsky in Poland and General de Gaulle in France drove them to take risks and draw up strategies that finally saved their countries from collapse, dependency and disgrace. Thus it is impossible, even dangerous, to separate facts completely from ideas. Global debates should take this observation as a starting point and accept the ambivalence of our judgements on all political and social realities in order to be able in each case to find an acceptable and creative compromise between universal principles and policies or strategies that serve particular interests, even when those interests are of the highest quality. 4. To sum up, modernity is the result of the breakdown of what was believed to be a social system or an empire, that is of global structures. Far from reflecting the strength of such systems, modernity in fact arises out of the break-up and fragmentation of social systems. But how are the conditions created that enable modernity to form by separating itself from social, political or religious systems governed by a desire for integration and domination? These conditions are of two very different types, both of which have been extensively studied. The first is usually revealed by analyses of social systems: the more complex these systems are, the more likely they are to fragment.

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This theory is too well known to be expounded at any length here: the separation of temporal and spiritual power and of economics and politics, and then the creation of notions such as romantic love or art for art’s sake and, more recently, the creation of virtual worlds, eventually led to the disappearance of the image of a dense network of interdependent norms. The private became separated from the public sphere, leading to the creation of, for example, female, gay or lesbian worlds or even of worlds corresponding to the various stages of individuals’ lives. This objectivist interpretation has been widely used in order to understand Western, particularly British, modernisation. It can be regarded as liberal thinking. The second is both similar to the first and yet very different from it. It is related to a general approach based on the emergence of the subject. The closer we get to societies that have complete power over themselves and are increasingly less self-limiting, the more the figure of the subject is seen to emerge, immediately revealed. Conversely, the further we move away from this type of society towards ‘weak’ societies that have only limited ability to create their own history – what I call their historicity – the more the image of the subject is covered up and concealed by appeals to a transcendence linked to a pessimistic concept of human life, of which a significant part of Christian thinking provides the most obvious example. Modernity has to define itself in this way, since it emerges only gradually, initially very indirectly and then increasingly directly, to the point at which the idea of human rights emerges. At this point, therefore, modernity is no longer developing in the spaces that used to separate increasingly divided social sub-systems. This reasoning may appear surprising, since it seems flatly to contradict the evolutionism that has become so firmly accepted during the last two centuries. However, it increasingly fits with the state of public opinion, which has become ambivalent about ideas such as progress or, from a different point of view, the sacred. 5. These two points of view complement rather than contradict each other, because they reach the same conclusion, namely that a systembased logic is gradually giving way to an actor-based logic. This complementarity reveals another side of Christian thought, including the idea of original sin and dependency on the divine will



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and its grace. Christianity shifted the world of the sacred towards that of the divine, since it placed the incarnation of God in Jesus, who was both man and God, at the heart of its experience and thought, which greatly encouraged the birth of human rights since the message of the son of God is a universal one, addressed to all men. These analyses could be summarised by advancing the hypothesis that there are several major types of society: •  those that combine modernity and modernisation and are the ones most firmly attached to modernity; •  those that combine the advance of instrumental modernisation with a strengthening of political systems based on domination and integration; •  and finally, those that manage neither to achieve modernity nor even to find a road to modernisation. This last type can be associated with all forms of government, not only with archaic, authoritarian government but also with liberal government, in the economic sense of the term, since its principal objective is to weaken the hold not only of the powers but also, at the moment, of all the figures of the subject over the increasingly diversified and uncontrollable set of elements that constitute the social system. Capitalism has been the principal agent in the construction of societies of this type. These observations should at least make evident the need to consider the problems of historical change in terms of the relationship between the principles of modernity and the roads of modernisation. Translated by Andy Wilson

CHAPTER TWO

THE ECONOMICAL STATUS AND SOCIAL ATTITUDES OF MIGRANT WORKERS IN CHINA Li Peilin and Li Wei

The comparative advantage in labor force is one of the main factors contributing to the rapid economic development of China. The advantage, to a great extent, depends on a large-scale shifting of rural labor to the non-farming sectors. In comparison with former Soviet Union and other East European countries, China is different not only in the political system, the ideology, and the process and targets of reform, but also in the social structure. Far before the reform the former Soviet Union and other East European countries had realized industrialization and nearly finished the process of replacing the labor force with technology  in the agricultural industry. As a result, the social structure in these countries is so stable and even rigid that there is less room for change. The situation is apparently different in China. The early stage of the reform saw great flexibility in its social structure allowing immense room for change. The very fact was that when people’s activity and creativity were mobilized by the reform the society was soon full of vitality. Changes could be seen everywhere such as the replacement of labor with technology in agriculture, the fast shifting from farming labor to non-farming sectors, and the moving of rural population to urban areas. All these brought profit to the society. Previously, we analyzed the contributing factors to the increase of GDP by considering three parts: capital, labor and total-factor productivity. We used to believe that total-factor productivity mainly consisted of technical innovation and Institutional reform. However, a recent expert-based calculation has shown that the shifting of labor from agriculture to non-agriculture sectors alone contributed to 20 percent or more of the GDP growth during the period from 1978 to 1998, much higher than that of Institutional reform. (Cai Fang and Wang Meiyan, 2002) Some Western scholars have for a long time expressed their worry about the consequences that the large-scale flow of migrant workers

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might produce, while some Chinese scholars also regarded the flowing of rural labor into cities as a threat to social stability. As early as 1994 when the first wave of migration of rural population was gathering strength, some Chinese scholars issued their prediction saying that “the migration wave was nearly a powder keg to the society,” that “an antisociety psychology might be with everyone joining the flow for a long time,” and that “if large-scale social unrest happened in China the mi­grant workers who did not find jobs in cities would be the active ones thus becoming the most destructive force.” (Wang Shan, 1994: 62–63) At the same time, however, there are also people who regard migrant workers as China’s main force of economic construction rather than as a destructive factor). It was estimated by Chinese scholars that migrant workers from the rural areas created a GDP growth of 1,000– 2,000 billion RMB for urban development each year, while adding 500– 600 billion RMB to rural income. (Han Changfu, 2006: 62). Another statistics made by Beijing Statistical Bureau showed that in 2003 the increased value produced by migrant workers in Beijing accounted for 83 percent of the construction industry, 49 percent of the retailing sector, and 29 percent of the manufacturing sector. (Investigative group of Beijing Municipal Government, 2006: 365). Actually, “migrant workers” mean farmer-turned workers who used to be farmers but now have left the countryside to find jobs in the cities. This is a special group whose members are still rural residents by identity according to the household registration system, who own farmland according to the land contract system, but who now do non-­agricultural works and depend on salary for a living. On January 18, 2006, the State Council issued a document entitled “Some Points of the State Council on the Solution to the Problems of Migrant Workers.” It was the first time that the term of “migrant workers” was mentioned in a document of the central government as an executive order. Theoretically, migrant workers may fall into two categories: those who are working in township enterprises near their home villages, called “leaving farmland but not leaving the countryside,” and those who have left the countryside to work in the cities, called “migrant workers or flowing workers.” Migrant workers have been a hot point in the recent decade or longer raising debating among academic circles, policy-making bodies and the media. Before 1984 when the reform movement was experiencing its early stage, the model of labor force shifting to the non-agricultural sectors was that farmers found jobs in township enterprises thus “leaving farmland but not leaving the countryside, coming to work in



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factories but not going to the cities” as often explained. This was believed to be a “Chinese characterized urbanization road.” The year 1984 was a real milestone when the government eventually lifted the restriction on rural people to find jobs in cities, raising a curtain on the debut of large-scale migration of farmers. During the period from 1985 to 1990, there were only 3.35 million rural people leaving the countryside while the number of rural laborers employed by township  enterprises reaching 22.86 million, the statistics showing that township enterprises were the main channel transforming farmers into workers by profession. The situation during the period from 1990 to 1995 was completely different, however. According to data from s­ everal large-scale surveys covering the Chinese mainland, migrant workers accounted for about 15 percent of the total rural labor force. Therefore, it could be estimated that the number of migrant workers reached 66 million in 1995 while those finding jobs in township enterprises being 27.54 million, showing that the capacity of township enterprises  in employing rural labor was decreasing and that the number and speed of rural labor flowing to cities was increasing. According to a survey covering 68,000 rural households in 7,100 villages of 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, which was made by the State Statistical Bureau in 2004, 120 million rural people had left the countryside to work in the cities, accounting for about 24 percent of the total rural labor force that year. If those who were working in the township enterprises were also considered, the total number of migrant workers in 2004 came to 200 million. This group of labor force was characterized by an average age of 28, with the majority having a junior middle-school education and working in the manufacturing, construction and service sectors. (Study Group of the Research Institution under the State Council, 2006: 3–4). This article is dedicated to finding such solutions as why large-scale migration of labor did not cause social chaos? Why migrant workers, who are at the bottom of the city life in terms of income, did not express strong disagreement with the society? And why migrant workers, who live in shabby places and are often unfairly treated in the cities, have no intention to present large-scale collective protests? This article uses data resulting from a sampling survey we made from March to July in 2006, which was entitled Chinese General Social Survey 2006 (CGSS) by CASS. The survey covered 260 towns and 520 villages and neighborhood committees in 130 counties and cities of 28 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. 7,100 households

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were interviewed and 7,063 reliable questionnaires were received. The error of the survey was less than 2%, thus reaching standard of statistical deduction. 1.  In General, the Working Conditions and Income of Migrant Workers are Poorer than that of City Workers The income gap between farmer-turned migrant workers and city workers was tremendous in terms of month salary. The average wage of a migrant worker was 921 yuan, being merely about 68.4 percent of that of a city worker, which was 1,346 yuan. What’s worth mentioning is that the wage of about 80 percent of the migrant workers was less than 1,000 yuan and, even worse, about 27 percent of them just earned 500 yuan or less each month. (see Table 2.1) Analysis of working hours showed that the working hours of migrant workers were much longer than that of city workers while their average income being much lower. Despite the fact that China Institutes an eight-hour working system, the migrant workers worked an average 56.6 hour a week, eight hours longer than that of city workers, which was 47.9 hours per week. What needs mentioning is that the working hour of 81.4 percent of the migrant workers was longer than 40 hours, the regulated limitation, each week, and about 34 percent of them worked 60 hours or even longer a week. (see Table 2.2). It was often believed that the income gap between migrant workers and city workers was due to an institutional discrimination against rural people according to the existing household registration system, Table 2.1  Month salary between migrant workers and city workers unit: % month salary less than 500 yuan 501–1,000 yuan 1,001–1,500 yuan 1,501–2,000 yuan more than 2,000 yuan total percentage average month salary: yuan

migrant workers N=738 27.1 52.2 13.9 3.8 3.0 100.00 921

X2=111.83, P