Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1177/2057150X20957457
Qinzhi Jiang
The literature on social stratification and mobility in Imperial China reveals that the academic tracking system was one important source of educational inequality. The Imperial Examinations system in Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty China was a dual-track structure formed of Civil (wen) and Military (wu) Examinations. Earlier scholars have focused on the provincial and national levels of the system, paying little attention to the lowest, county-level shengyuan examination, the starting point of the wen and wu system. This study looks into the Account Books for Imperial Examination participation in Qing Dynasty Shicang, Songyang County, Zhejiang Province, focusing particularly on examination records of the Que lineage. After making a fortune in the iron-smelting business, the Ques first purchased an Imperial Academy studentship (jiansheng), then later married into local gentry families and began to participate in the Imperial Examinations. The Taiping Rebellion (1851–1865) brought a high mortality rate to the region, which increased the chances of success in the Imperial wu-track, the Military Examination. The Ques made use of this opportunity to participate in both the Civil and Military Examinations. This paper compares two common motivations for taking the examinations—protection of family wealth and status, and pursuit of the highest degree. This study shows that each motivation had a different outcome. Those only interested in safeguarding and enhancing family wealth were able to maintain a balance between pursuit of their degree and the family business, while those aiming at the highest degrees often fell into the trap of repeated attempts and eventual bankruptcy. The dominance of the first motivation among ordinary Chinese demonstrates the self-adjustment of local society to the Imperial Examination tracking system.
{"title":"Civil and Military Examination participation of the Que lineage in Shicang village in the Qing Dynasty","authors":"Qinzhi Jiang","doi":"10.1177/2057150X20957457","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2057150X20957457","url":null,"abstract":"The literature on social stratification and mobility in Imperial China reveals that the academic tracking system was one important source of educational inequality. The Imperial Examinations system in Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty China was a dual-track structure formed of Civil (wen) and Military (wu) Examinations. Earlier scholars have focused on the provincial and national levels of the system, paying little attention to the lowest, county-level shengyuan examination, the starting point of the wen and wu system. This study looks into the Account Books for Imperial Examination participation in Qing Dynasty Shicang, Songyang County, Zhejiang Province, focusing particularly on examination records of the Que lineage. After making a fortune in the iron-smelting business, the Ques first purchased an Imperial Academy studentship (jiansheng), then later married into local gentry families and began to participate in the Imperial Examinations. The Taiping Rebellion (1851–1865) brought a high mortality rate to the region, which increased the chances of success in the Imperial wu-track, the Military Examination. The Ques made use of this opportunity to participate in both the Civil and Military Examinations. This paper compares two common motivations for taking the examinations—protection of family wealth and status, and pursuit of the highest degree. This study shows that each motivation had a different outcome. Those only interested in safeguarding and enhancing family wealth were able to maintain a balance between pursuit of their degree and the family business, while those aiming at the highest degrees often fell into the trap of repeated attempts and eventual bankruptcy. The dominance of the first motivation among ordinary Chinese demonstrates the self-adjustment of local society to the Imperial Examination tracking system.","PeriodicalId":37302,"journal":{"name":"社会","volume":"6 1","pages":"547 - 570"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2057150X20957457","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45939819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1177/2057150X20950507
W. J. Yeung, Xue-bin Chen, X. Ding, M. Cheung
Early childhood is a crucial period for human development that has long-term implications for one’s life trajectories. During the years before formal schooling, brain size and structures, as well as cognitive abilities, undergo rapid development. Children’s cognitive abilities develop by leaps and bounds and show great malleability. Cognitive development during early childhood exerts a long-lasting influence on children’s life chances in adulthood. In China, however, there is no established reliable early childhood achievement test that can be used in a study. This study validates an achievement test for Chinese preschoolers. We analyze data from a nationally representative sample of children aged three to six who participated in the Zhang-Yeung Test of Achievement for Chinese Children (ZY-TACC) in 2012. The instrument consists of a 28-item verbal test and a 24-item numeracy test. Our evaluations indicate a satisfactory level of difficulty, as well as high internal consistency and reliability. This instrument exhibits ample ability to distinguish among children of different ages and varying family backgrounds in ways consistent with previous literature. Children’s test scores are also found to correlate in the expected direction with their behavioral indicators. We demonstrate that the ZY-TACC is a psychometrically robust, culturally and contextually appropriate instrument for assessing Chinese preschool children’s achievement. The instrument can make a significant contribution to research on early childhood development in China.
{"title":"An achievement test for Chinese preschool children: Validity and social correlates","authors":"W. J. Yeung, Xue-bin Chen, X. Ding, M. Cheung","doi":"10.1177/2057150X20950507","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2057150X20950507","url":null,"abstract":"Early childhood is a crucial period for human development that has long-term implications for one’s life trajectories. During the years before formal schooling, brain size and structures, as well as cognitive abilities, undergo rapid development. Children’s cognitive abilities develop by leaps and bounds and show great malleability. Cognitive development during early childhood exerts a long-lasting influence on children’s life chances in adulthood. In China, however, there is no established reliable early childhood achievement test that can be used in a study. This study validates an achievement test for Chinese preschoolers. We analyze data from a nationally representative sample of children aged three to six who participated in the Zhang-Yeung Test of Achievement for Chinese Children (ZY-TACC) in 2012. The instrument consists of a 28-item verbal test and a 24-item numeracy test. Our evaluations indicate a satisfactory level of difficulty, as well as high internal consistency and reliability. This instrument exhibits ample ability to distinguish among children of different ages and varying family backgrounds in ways consistent with previous literature. Children’s test scores are also found to correlate in the expected direction with their behavioral indicators. We demonstrate that the ZY-TACC is a psychometrically robust, culturally and contextually appropriate instrument for assessing Chinese preschool children’s achievement. The instrument can make a significant contribution to research on early childhood development in China.","PeriodicalId":37302,"journal":{"name":"社会","volume":"6 1","pages":"497 - 520"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2057150X20950507","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47266453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-20DOI: 10.1177/2057150X20956835
Huanyu Wu
The Chinese term ‘gong-yi’ (公益), which is usually translated as ‘philanthropy’ or ‘public interest’ in English, has long been regarded as a new modern concept which originated from Japan in the early 20th century. This study, however, finds that it appeared in China no later than the middle of the Qing Dynasty. At that time, its usage had three major meanings: economic benefits; national interests; and local public affairs. The ‘national interest’ meaning of the term was most likely introduced into Japan and was brought back into China in the late 19th century along with the new thinking of the Meiji Restoration. ‘Gong-yi’, with its newly coined meaning, was used as an ideological term to express ideas about reformation in early 20th century China. It was in this capacity that the Chinese ‘gong-yi’ was swiftly popularized and often referred to the reformation as national interest. At the same time, the denotation of ‘gong-yi’ was sometimes ambiguous, wavering between ‘the nation’ and ‘the local’. It reflected the volatile conflict between the state and the local over legitimate control of ‘public’ resources in a transitional period. In my view, the question of to what extent this interlock between the emergence of modern ‘gong-yi’ and the nation’s modern transition might have shaped the historical formation of Chinese citizenship yields insights for the investigation of the nature of Chinese philanthropy and its essence in the public spirit.
{"title":"The formation of ‘gong-yi’ in modern China: A philological perspective","authors":"Huanyu Wu","doi":"10.1177/2057150X20956835","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2057150X20956835","url":null,"abstract":"The Chinese term ‘gong-yi’ (公益), which is usually translated as ‘philanthropy’ or ‘public interest’ in English, has long been regarded as a new modern concept which originated from Japan in the early 20th century. This study, however, finds that it appeared in China no later than the middle of the Qing Dynasty. At that time, its usage had three major meanings: economic benefits; national interests; and local public affairs. The ‘national interest’ meaning of the term was most likely introduced into Japan and was brought back into China in the late 19th century along with the new thinking of the Meiji Restoration. ‘Gong-yi’, with its newly coined meaning, was used as an ideological term to express ideas about reformation in early 20th century China. It was in this capacity that the Chinese ‘gong-yi’ was swiftly popularized and often referred to the reformation as national interest. At the same time, the denotation of ‘gong-yi’ was sometimes ambiguous, wavering between ‘the nation’ and ‘the local’. It reflected the volatile conflict between the state and the local over legitimate control of ‘public’ resources in a transitional period. In my view, the question of to what extent this interlock between the emergence of modern ‘gong-yi’ and the nation’s modern transition might have shaped the historical formation of Chinese citizenship yields insights for the investigation of the nature of Chinese philanthropy and its essence in the public spirit.","PeriodicalId":37302,"journal":{"name":"社会","volume":"6 1","pages":"571 - 614"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2057150X20956835","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49596976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-01DOI: 10.1177/2057150X20932718
Feiyu Sun
According to Durkheim, suicide means a conscious choice of death. The only opposite of death is being, and there is no middle ground in between. Therefore, when Durkheim discusses suicide, he certainly touches on the issue of living, or a choice of self-preservation, in a cryptical way, as well. This veiled discussion has been unacknowledged by Chinese mainland sociology because the widely adopted Chinese version of Durkheim’s Suicide loses most of the textual evidence of this clue in its translation. This paper offers a textual analysis of Durkheim’s Suicide based on that textual evidence. Durkheim treats different types of suicide as extreme forms of different types of morals, and, in many places, he asks under what kind of moral condition one can achieve self-preservation. This paper argues that there is an inner connection between Durkheim’s definitions of three types of suicide and his definition of sociology. As a social scientist who studies morality, he sees sociology as the expression of a particular modern morality, the same kind of moral condition that he calls for in his book. This paper shows that for Durkheim, this moral entity signifies for self-preservation both for the modern individual and for sociology.
{"title":"Self-preservation and sociology’s modern moral personality: Dual structure in Durkheim’s Suicide","authors":"Feiyu Sun","doi":"10.1177/2057150X20932718","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2057150X20932718","url":null,"abstract":"According to Durkheim, suicide means a conscious choice of death. The only opposite of death is being, and there is no middle ground in between. Therefore, when Durkheim discusses suicide, he certainly touches on the issue of living, or a choice of self-preservation, in a cryptical way, as well. This veiled discussion has been unacknowledged by Chinese mainland sociology because the widely adopted Chinese version of Durkheim’s Suicide loses most of the textual evidence of this clue in its translation. This paper offers a textual analysis of Durkheim’s Suicide based on that textual evidence. Durkheim treats different types of suicide as extreme forms of different types of morals, and, in many places, he asks under what kind of moral condition one can achieve self-preservation. This paper argues that there is an inner connection between Durkheim’s definitions of three types of suicide and his definition of sociology. As a social scientist who studies morality, he sees sociology as the expression of a particular modern morality, the same kind of moral condition that he calls for in his book. This paper shows that for Durkheim, this moral entity signifies for self-preservation both for the modern individual and for sociology.","PeriodicalId":37302,"journal":{"name":"社会","volume":"6 1","pages":"427 - 456"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2057150X20932718","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47938319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-01DOI: 10.1177/2057150X20934066
Haowen Zheng
The One Child Policy initiated in the late 1970s created a birth cohort with an unusually high proportion of only children. This paper examines the relationship between being the only child in the family and educational attainment, as well as its potential variations by social origin. Drawing my sample from the China Family Panel Studies, I compare two birth cohorts born before and after the birth-control policy. Results show that in the younger cohort, being the only child in the family produces a premium in educational outcomes, including years of completed schooling and odds of progressing through critical grade transitions. In addition, I observe a pattern that the only-child premium tends to be larger for people with higher social origins in competitive grade transitions.
{"title":"The only-child premium and moderation by social origin: Educational stratification in post-reform China","authors":"Haowen Zheng","doi":"10.1177/2057150X20934066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2057150X20934066","url":null,"abstract":"The One Child Policy initiated in the late 1970s created a birth cohort with an unusually high proportion of only children. This paper examines the relationship between being the only child in the family and educational attainment, as well as its potential variations by social origin. Drawing my sample from the China Family Panel Studies, I compare two birth cohorts born before and after the birth-control policy. Results show that in the younger cohort, being the only child in the family produces a premium in educational outcomes, including years of completed schooling and odds of progressing through critical grade transitions. In addition, I observe a pattern that the only-child premium tends to be larger for people with higher social origins in competitive grade transitions.","PeriodicalId":37302,"journal":{"name":"社会","volume":"6 1","pages":"384 - 409"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2057150X20934066","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43631112","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-01DOI: 10.1177/2057150X20941363
M. Whyte
I present an overview of selected findings from four major research projects I conducted earlier in my career that were designed to describe and explain the patterns of continuity and change in family patterns in the People’s Republic of China: an examination of rural family patterns carried out through refugee interviewing in Hong Kong in 1972–1974; a parallel examination of urban family patterns carried out through Hong Kong refugee interviews in 1977–1978; an examination of the transformation from arranged to free-choice marriages conducted through a survey in Chengdu, Sichuan, in 1987; and an examination of patterns of intergenerational relationships carried out through a 1994 survey in Baoding, Hebei. The latter two projects included comparisons with the findings of earlier surveys of family behavior in urban Taiwan. Each project yielded findings that did not fit prevailing theories of family change, and in my efforts to explain puzzling findings, I ended up emphasizing the impact on families of the specific local institutions produced by China’s socialist transformation in the 1950s. Even though many of these institutional arrangements have been altered in the reform era, I argue that in certain realms of family life, the impact of pre-reform decades can still be seen in family patterns in recent times.
{"title":"Confronting puzzles in understanding Chinese family change: A personal reflection","authors":"M. Whyte","doi":"10.1177/2057150X20941363","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2057150X20941363","url":null,"abstract":"I present an overview of selected findings from four major research projects I conducted earlier in my career that were designed to describe and explain the patterns of continuity and change in family patterns in the People’s Republic of China: an examination of rural family patterns carried out through refugee interviewing in Hong Kong in 1972–1974; a parallel examination of urban family patterns carried out through Hong Kong refugee interviews in 1977–1978; an examination of the transformation from arranged to free-choice marriages conducted through a survey in Chengdu, Sichuan, in 1987; and an examination of patterns of intergenerational relationships carried out through a 1994 survey in Baoding, Hebei. The latter two projects included comparisons with the findings of earlier surveys of family behavior in urban Taiwan. Each project yielded findings that did not fit prevailing theories of family change, and in my efforts to explain puzzling findings, I ended up emphasizing the impact on families of the specific local institutions produced by China’s socialist transformation in the 1950s. Even though many of these institutional arrangements have been altered in the reform era, I argue that in certain realms of family life, the impact of pre-reform decades can still be seen in family patterns in recent times.","PeriodicalId":37302,"journal":{"name":"社会","volume":"6 1","pages":"339 - 363"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2057150X20941363","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45720042","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-01DOI: 10.1177/2057150X20942969
Jingdong Qu
Case study is an irreplaceable sociological strategy for research on social construction. Different from either hypothesis tests or descriptive accounts of social life, case study aims to make a long chain of interpretations from a typical case to the construction of the whole society, by linkages of concrete people, conditions, and situations in a case with other related social, political, and cultural elements all the way through. In other words, the case is not only influenced by the policies made by central or local governments at different levels, but also located in grassroots customs and mores at the bottom. To find these multiple relations horizontally and vertically clustered in a case study, various methods of -graphy must be used, such as geography, cartography, demography, historiography, biography, autobiography, lexicography, and, finally, ethnography. At the same time, however, all these elements and their relations should be activated by eventalization having happened in daily life. Through the types of stimulation of abnormal processes or sublimation of normal rituals in eventalization, the complicated, correlative, and sustainable relationships among social elements are presented as many social mechanisms in different dimensions. On all accounts, the whole scene of society will be opened out as a solid structure by the various points (events), lines (linkages), and plane (mechanism) in three dimensions. As Max Weber said, ‘The causal relations in sociological research would be satisfied as a special explanatory demonstration’.
{"title":"Case studies towards the analysis of total social construction","authors":"Jingdong Qu","doi":"10.1177/2057150X20942969","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2057150X20942969","url":null,"abstract":"Case study is an irreplaceable sociological strategy for research on social construction. Different from either hypothesis tests or descriptive accounts of social life, case study aims to make a long chain of interpretations from a typical case to the construction of the whole society, by linkages of concrete people, conditions, and situations in a case with other related social, political, and cultural elements all the way through. In other words, the case is not only influenced by the policies made by central or local governments at different levels, but also located in grassroots customs and mores at the bottom. To find these multiple relations horizontally and vertically clustered in a case study, various methods of -graphy must be used, such as geography, cartography, demography, historiography, biography, autobiography, lexicography, and, finally, ethnography. At the same time, however, all these elements and their relations should be activated by eventalization having happened in daily life. Through the types of stimulation of abnormal processes or sublimation of normal rituals in eventalization, the complicated, correlative, and sustainable relationships among social elements are presented as many social mechanisms in different dimensions. On all accounts, the whole scene of society will be opened out as a solid structure by the various points (events), lines (linkages), and plane (mechanism) in three dimensions. As Max Weber said, ‘The causal relations in sociological research would be satisfied as a special explanatory demonstration’.","PeriodicalId":37302,"journal":{"name":"社会","volume":"6 1","pages":"457 - 493"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2057150X20942969","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43882490","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-01DOI: 10.1177/2057150X20929480
Yuling Wu, Hongan Xiao
In this study, we investigate the correlation between migrant-related factors and migrants’ childrearing values concerning community-oriented versus individual-based dimensions, with a particular interest in the effects of rural household registration (hukou) status and settlement intention. Using data from the 2009 Longitudinal Survey on Rural–Urban Migration in China, we find that rural migrants stress individual-based qualities the most, such as independence, diligence, and responsibility, while they also emphasize certain community-oriented qualities, such as tolerance/respect, and obedience. Local or non-local rural hukou status at the city level is not an important factor in people’s migrant lives when it comes to shaping childrearing values. Instead, settlement intention is found to be more important than hukou status in affecting rural migrants’ childrearing values, particularly in non-local rural migrants, in that rural migrants with settlement intention tend to favor community-oriented values as opposed to individual-based values for their children.
{"title":"Rural–urban migration and childrearing values of rural migrants in contemporary China","authors":"Yuling Wu, Hongan Xiao","doi":"10.1177/2057150X20929480","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2057150X20929480","url":null,"abstract":"In this study, we investigate the correlation between migrant-related factors and migrants’ childrearing values concerning community-oriented versus individual-based dimensions, with a particular interest in the effects of rural household registration (hukou) status and settlement intention. Using data from the 2009 Longitudinal Survey on Rural–Urban Migration in China, we find that rural migrants stress individual-based qualities the most, such as independence, diligence, and responsibility, while they also emphasize certain community-oriented qualities, such as tolerance/respect, and obedience. Local or non-local rural hukou status at the city level is not an important factor in people’s migrant lives when it comes to shaping childrearing values. Instead, settlement intention is found to be more important than hukou status in affecting rural migrants’ childrearing values, particularly in non-local rural migrants, in that rural migrants with settlement intention tend to favor community-oriented values as opposed to individual-based values for their children.","PeriodicalId":37302,"journal":{"name":"社会","volume":"6 1","pages":"364 - 383"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2057150X20929480","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48823181","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-05-28DOI: 10.1177/2057150X20925312
Chunni Zhang, Yunfeng Lu
In the past two decades, scholars have devoted much attention to the measure of Chinese religions, mainly using the scheme based on denominational affiliation, which is the most common approach to religious classification in western societies. However, the denomination-based scheme cannot capture the actual religious life of China. We point out four challenges this scheme encounters in survey research in China: the foreignness of the Chinese term ‘religion’ (Zongjiao); the misconception of denominational affiliation; the inapplicability of compulsory, one-single-choice religion; and the social or political sensitivity of specific religions, especially Protestantism. After critiquing the traditional scheme used to measure Chinese religions, we offer a new approach that addresses its shortcomings. Our revised approach attempts to research belief without using the term ‘religion’, focuses on belief in deities rather than on denominational affiliation, and allows multiple answers to the question about religious beliefs. In order to compare the denomination-based scheme with the deity-based scheme, we conducted experiments in the three waves of the China Family Panel Studies in 2012, 2014, and 2016. Our results show that the deity-based scheme yields more meaningful interpretations and more accuracy in religious classification than the denomination-based scheme in China. This article ends with some suggestions for improving the measurement of Chinese religion in future survey research studies.
{"title":"The measure of Chinese religions: Denomination-based or deity-based?","authors":"Chunni Zhang, Yunfeng Lu","doi":"10.1177/2057150X20925312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2057150X20925312","url":null,"abstract":"In the past two decades, scholars have devoted much attention to the measure of Chinese religions, mainly using the scheme based on denominational affiliation, which is the most common approach to religious classification in western societies. However, the denomination-based scheme cannot capture the actual religious life of China. We point out four challenges this scheme encounters in survey research in China: the foreignness of the Chinese term ‘religion’ (Zongjiao); the misconception of denominational affiliation; the inapplicability of compulsory, one-single-choice religion; and the social or political sensitivity of specific religions, especially Protestantism. After critiquing the traditional scheme used to measure Chinese religions, we offer a new approach that addresses its shortcomings. Our revised approach attempts to research belief without using the term ‘religion’, focuses on belief in deities rather than on denominational affiliation, and allows multiple answers to the question about religious beliefs. In order to compare the denomination-based scheme with the deity-based scheme, we conducted experiments in the three waves of the China Family Panel Studies in 2012, 2014, and 2016. Our results show that the deity-based scheme yields more meaningful interpretations and more accuracy in religious classification than the denomination-based scheme in China. This article ends with some suggestions for improving the measurement of Chinese religion in future survey research studies.","PeriodicalId":37302,"journal":{"name":"社会","volume":"6 1","pages":"410 - 426"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2057150X20925312","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43133603","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-01DOI: 10.1177/2057150X20912581
Hideo Akabayashi, Kayo Nozaki, S. Yukawa, Wangyang Li
There is wide variation in the degree of gender gap in test scores around the world, suggesting the strong influence of institutions, culture and inequality. We present comparative evidence on the gender gap in educational achievement in China, Japan, and the USA, with an emphasis on the gender-specific effect of parental income and education, and the child’s own preferences for study subjects. We used three major national representative longitudinal surveys with rich information about cognitive outcome measures of respondent children as well as educational investment and parental socio-economic status that allow us to analyze their inter-relationship. We found that low household income tends to have more adverse effects on language test scores for boys than for girls in the USA, as is consistent with previous studies. However, it does not have an impact on gender gap in test scores in China and tends to affect girls more adversely than boys in Japan.
{"title":"Gender differences in educational outcomes and the effect of family background: A comparative perspective from East Asia","authors":"Hideo Akabayashi, Kayo Nozaki, S. Yukawa, Wangyang Li","doi":"10.1177/2057150X20912581","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2057150X20912581","url":null,"abstract":"There is wide variation in the degree of gender gap in test scores around the world, suggesting the strong influence of institutions, culture and inequality. We present comparative evidence on the gender gap in educational achievement in China, Japan, and the USA, with an emphasis on the gender-specific effect of parental income and education, and the child’s own preferences for study subjects. We used three major national representative longitudinal surveys with rich information about cognitive outcome measures of respondent children as well as educational investment and parental socio-economic status that allow us to analyze their inter-relationship. We found that low household income tends to have more adverse effects on language test scores for boys than for girls in the USA, as is consistent with previous studies. However, it does not have an impact on gender gap in test scores in China and tends to affect girls more adversely than boys in Japan.","PeriodicalId":37302,"journal":{"name":"社会","volume":"6 1","pages":"315 - 335"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2057150X20912581","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48945688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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