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10.1146/annurev.soc.28.110601.140823
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2002. 28:91–116
doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.28.110601.140823
Copyright c
°2002 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved
CHINESE SOCIAL STRATIFICATION AND
SOCIAL MOBILITY
Yanjie Bian
Division of Social Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,
Kowloon, Hong Kong; e-mail: sobian@ust.hk
Key Words China class, inequality, mobility
■Abstract This essay reviews post-1980 research on class stratification, socio-
economic inequalities, and social mobility in the People’s Republic of China. Chi-
nese class stratification has transformed from a rigid status hierarchy under Mao to an
open, evolving class system in the post-Mao period. Socioeconomic inequalities have
also been altered. State redistributive inequalities are giving way to patterns increas-
ingly generated by how individuals and groups succeed in a growing market-oriented
economy; rigorous empirical studies have been conducted on occupational prestige,
income distribution, housing and consumption, and gender inequality. Finally, occu-
pational mobility, a rare opportunity under Mao, is becoming a living experience for
many Chinese in light of emerging labor markets. Scholarly works on status attain-
ment, career mobility, and employment processes show both stability and change in
the once politicized social mobility regime. There is relatively richer research output
on urban than on rural China, despite the greater and more profound transformations
that occurred in rural China.
INTRODUCTION
Chinese social stratification and social mobility is a fast growing and exciting area
of sociological research. It is fast growing because China’s post-1978 economic
reforms and consequent large-scale transformations have provided an unusual,
long-lasting opportunity for sociologists who are inherently interested in social
change and social differentiation. To prepare this review I built a bibliography of
more than 300 relevant English-language publications since 1980, and a greater
collection of Chinese-language research literature. This research area is also im-
mensely exciting to scholars, not only because it progressively accumulates socio-
logical knowledge about a highly dynamic country increasingly engaged in the
globaleconomy(Solinger2001), butalsobecauseresearchershaveexaminedques-
tions of fundamental interest to both China specialists and comparative/general
sociologists.
0360-0572/02/0811-0091$14.00 91
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92 BIAN
This excitement can be felt in an impressive accumulation of major journal
publications on China since 1988,1in a growing number of active sociologists
who have conducted original research in the country,2and in two most recent
and highly relevant review essays in this journal. One essay was about China’s
social change and included a review of research on social stratification and social
mobility up to the mid-1980s (Walder 1989a). The second review focused more on
evaluating theoretical developments and research findings for an ongoing “market
transition debate” (Nee & Matthews 1996), for which China has been a focal
pointof observation.Anticipatingthat futureresearchersand classroom instructors
would use the present essay either alone or with the previous ones, I defined my
tasks as synthesizing post-1980 research achievements in three interrelated areas
of China’s (a) class stratification, (b) socioeconomic inequalities, and (c) social
mobility. The main body of research literature under review is English-language
publications by sociologists and other social scientists; I also included a few of the
more interesting Chinese-language publications.
CLASS STRATIFICATION
Overall Trend
China underwent extensive change in the wake of the death of Chairman Mao in
1976. Under Mao, a rigid status hierarchy grew out of a state socialist economy
in which private ownership of productive assets was gradually eliminated between
1952 and 1958 by collectivization of farming and state consolidation of urban
economy,diminishingpre-revolutionsocial classesinaCommunistregime (Whyte
1975, Kraus 1981). Ironically, the post-1978 regime under the new paramount
leader Deng Xiaoping began what now is known to be a remarkable reform policy
that has decollectivized and commodified both rural and urban economies, eroding
the institutional bases of the pre-reform status hierarchy. Since then, an open,
evolving class system has been in the making (Davis 1995).
The Pre-Reform Status Hierarchy
Four structural and behavioral dimensions classified the Chinese into qualitatively
different status groups under Mao: (a) a rural-urban divide in residential status,
(b) a state-collective dualism in economic structure, (c) a cadre-worker dichotomy
1Mylibrary search indicates that ASR,AJS,and Social Forcespublished19 articles on China
from 1949 to 1987 and 45 articles and commentaries in the most recent 14 years since 1988.
2In addition to China specialists, well-known sociologists, but not otherwise known as hav-
ing expertise on China, include Peter Blau, Craig Calhoun, Randall Collins, Glen Elder,
Barbara Entwisle, Alex Inkeles, John R. Logan, Phyllis Moen, Ivan Szelenyi, Donald
Treiman, and Nancy Tuma. Many more researchers are currently engaged in China-related
research projects.
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CHINESE STRATIFICATION AND MOBILITY 93
in occupational classification, and (d) a “revolution-antirevolution” split in polit-
ical characterization.
Key to the rural-urban divide was a rigid household registration institution,
or hukou, that restricted all Chinese to their place of birth for their lifetime
(Cheng& Selden1994, Solinger1999). Boundtocollectivefarming, peasantswere
completely cut off from many urban privileges—compulsory education, quality
schools, health care, public housing, varieties of foodstuffs, to name only a few—
and they largely lived in poverty (Parish 1975, Parish & Whyte 1978, Unger 1984,
Chan et al. 1992). Only a tiny fraction of the rural-born had the chance to move up
to cities or towns through military mobilization, marriage, or attainment of higher
education and subsequent job assignments (Kirkby 1985:114). Organized trans-
fers, or “sent-down” campaigns, of city-born youths to rural areas between 1958
and 1977 (more so after 1966) caused severe anxieties to the affected households
(Bernstein 1977). Such an experience had lasting impact on the life trajectories of
these youths even after they returned to the cities (Zhou & Hou 1999).
The state-collective dualism characterized Chinese economic structure, but in
addition it created a status distinction between privileged state workers and their
deprived collective counterparts—its Western analogy is labor market dualism in
capitalisteconomies (Hodson & Kaufman 1982).While all peasants wereconfined
totheruralcollectivesector,aworking urbanitewasassigned astate-or acollective-
sector job. State workers, accounting for 78% of the urban labor force by 1978
(SSB 1989:101), were provided with “iron rice bowls” of lifelong employment
and an impressive array of insurance and welfare benefits, unavailable to collective
workers (Walder 1986:44–45). This contrast was devastating because under the
“work-unit (or danwei) ownership of labor” (Davis 1990), only half the workers
couldchange jobsin lifetime(Walder1992:526)or 1%–2%per year(Davis 1992a),
and85% ofinter-firm mobilitywas withineconomic sectors (Bian1994:116). Such
a regime of labor-control reinforced state-collective segmentation (Lin & Bian
1991) and gave rise to the unique Chinese phenomena of “organized dependence”
(Walder 1986), “work-unit status” (Bian 1994), and “danwei society” (Butterfield
1982, L¨u & Perry 1997).
While “cadre” and “worker” were crude job categories in the official coding
system, they were considered two status groups as well. State cadre (guojia ganbu)
referredto aminority group—around5%of thetotal workforceor 20%of theurban
labor force-of those individuals who occupied prestigious managerial and profes-
sional jobs. These individuals were provided with above-average compensation
packages (Walder 1995) and were kept in reserve for training and promotion into
leadership positions (about 2%) in party and government offices (Zhou 2001). In
doing so, Mao’s managers and professionals became fundamentally dependent on
the Communist party-state (Davis 2000a). In contrast, those classified as workers
(gong ren) most likely stayed in the group throughout their lifetime; a worker’s
promotion into a cadre position was very rare (Bian 1994:140–41). In the country-
side, salaried government employees were recognized as state cadres, and village
cadres, although unsalaried, were screened by the Communist party and exercised
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94 BIAN
political and managerial authority over ordinary peasants (Oi 1989, Chan et al.
1992).
Finally, all individuals and households were politically evaluated into revolu-
tionary (“red”) or antirevolutionary (“black”) “classes” (Unger 1982). Reds were
the forces of Leninist party dictatorship, while blacks were the party-made “class
enemies” ( jie ji di ren) of the regime. But these were not fixed categories. Primar-
ily, the deciding criterion was a person’s family class origin before the land reform
of 1948 to 1950; a property-less class origin made a person intrinsically red, and
a property-class origin put a person in one of the few black categories (Whyte &
Parish 1984). In addition, and more important, a person’s political performance
(biaoxian) in numerous party-led campaigns and activities could reverse a given
class label, and that person could consequently receive different political treatment
(Walder 1986). Each party-ledcampaign wave wasthe new momentof political re-
labeling, recharacterization, and regrouping; many had to be reconfirmed for their
“redness” or “blackness” through political engagement, but new class enemies
would surely be in the making for the time (Kraus 1981). This political-labeling
culture reached its highest intensity during the Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976),
the eve of a new era of depoliticization and development-oriented reforms to
modernize China.
Emerging Social Classes in Rural China
Post-Mao reforms started in rural areas by peasants themselves in 1978 (Wang &
Zhou 1994). A household responsibility system, which recognizes a rural house-
hold as the basic unit of production, distribution, and consumption, took property
rights from People’s Communes back to individual families (Oi 1989, Nee 1991,
Chan et al. 1992). By 1983, collective farming became history (Lu 2001). As
autonomous producers, peasant households had residual income rights over their
crops, as well as the rights to specialize in farming or to free themselves from land
to work locally or elsewhere for higher income from a nonagricultural job (Nee
1989, Unger 1994). Both of these opportunities increased tremendously through
the1980s and especially after 1992(Parish et al.1995). For instance, migrantpeas-
ant labor flooded towns and cities (Ma 2001). By 1995, an estimated 80 million
peasant laborers worked and lived in the cities (Lu 2001:20). The once homoge-
neous “peasant class” (Parish 1975, Chan et al. 1992) differentiated in many ways.
A focused attention has been given to the faith of rural cadres. Nee & Lian
(1994) were the first to argue that cadres, rural and urban, would gradually give
up their political commitments to the Communist party while turning attention
to market opportunities. Their opportunism model was a serious and constructive
effort to formalize a theory about the declining political commitment in reform-
ing state socialism. Fieldwork in Chen Village (Chan et al. 1992), Daqiuzhuang
Village (Lin 1995, Lin & Chen 1999), and Zuoping County (Cook 1998), for in-
stance, indicate that during the reforms rural cadres gained control and income
rights over collective industry, exerted influence for salaried positions for family
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CHINESE STRATIFICATION AND MOBILITY 95
members in village enterprises, capitalized on information and influence networks
with private entrepreneurs, and even started “insider privatization” to strip off col-
lective assets (Nee & Su 1998). Other studies concentrated on developmental and
distributive issues (Parish 1985, Nee 1989, 1991, Knight & Song 1993, Rozelle
1994, Lyons 1997, Oi 2000, Kung & Lee 2001). Synthesizing these and other
published findings, So (2001:6) argues that decentralization split Mao’s peasant
stratum into a rich peasant class and a poor peasant class and that the rich peasant
class “capitalizes on the abundant supply of surplus laborers in the countryside.”
Class conflicts arise, observes So, in the form of numerous protests from poor
peasants complaining about high and irregular taxes, state-imposed low prices of
their agricultural products, and encroachment on their land and houses, among
other problems.
For two decades, sociologists inside China have worked as a team to study
emerging rural classes. A thematic statement of the result of this teamwork can be
found in Lu (1989, 2001). Not restricted by any specific theory, Lu’s view mixes
neo-Marxist concepts of ownership and control, Weberian concept of authority,
andBourdieu’s conceptof expertise indefining eight emergingrural classes. These
classes and estimated percentages in the registered rural population as of 1999 are
(a) rural cadres are political elites who control, one way or another, collective
economy at all levels, 7%; (b) private entrepreneurs are the new capitalist class,
less than 1%; (c) managers of township and village enterprises are the rising man-
agerial class, 1.5%; (d) household business owners and individual industrialists
and commercialists are the petty bourgeoisie, 6% to 7%; (e) professionals are
the new middle class, 2.5%; (f) employees in collective industry and migrant
peasant-workers in cities are “peasant laborers” (nong min gong) whose house-
hold registration in home villages makes them “floating population,” 16% to 18%;
(g) wage labor in local private sector is considered the “new working class,” 16%
to 17%; and (h) peasants work and live on income from agricultural products,
48% to 50%. Although informative, this classification is sketchy at best; both the
defining criteria and the assessments of the distribution of emerging rural classes
are subject to the ongoing transformations.
Urban Social Classes in the Making
Urban reforms were implemented later than rural reforms and have been closely
guided and adjusted by the state (Wang 1996). First, the influx of peasant ped-
dlers to cities ignited the rise of household businesses (getihu) among otherwise
hopeless urbanites (Gold 1990, Shi 1993, Davis 1999). Then there was a move
to decentralize state industry and the fiscal system, giving financial incentives to
local governments, factory managers, and individual workers (Naughton 1995).
However, the redistribution-oriented polity and macro-economic structure were
coupled with a paternal factory culture, which presented resistance to reform di-
rectives (Walder 1987, 1989b, Shirk 1993). The emergence of labor and capital
markets after 1992 finally put the urban economy under a market allocation of
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resources, although the new policy of “grasp the big, release the small” created
a state monopoly sector containing strategically vital industries and firms and
sent the rest of state firms to an “open” sector to compete with nonstate entities
(Lin et al. 1998:203–8). Massive layoffs and organized transfers of state-sector
workers paralleled the flooding of migrant peasants who work in the informal, ex-
panding labor market in the cities (Solinger 1999). Mao’s protected working class
of state-sector workers became differentiated and de-empowered (Whyte 1999),
while state officials and managers gained executive control and income rights over
stateproperties and becamecapitalized(So 2001). Privateentrepreneursrosein the
growing market economy but lacked any political interest or autonomy (Pearson
1997). Intellectual class status remained ambiguous (Zhang 2000).
THE DIFFERENTIATION AND DE-EMPOWERMENT OF THE WORKING CLASS Mao’s
working class was officially and politically recognized as a “leading class” (ling
dao jie ji). Post-1978 market reforms eroded this status recognition and differ-
entiated the working class into wage labor in the private sector (12 million as of
1998), unprotected labor in the state sector (70 million), layoff labor wandering
in search for a job (30 million), and deprived migrant peasant-labor (60 million)
(Zhang 2000:30). There were also large numbers of collective-sector labor and
retired labor. The de-empowerment of the working class has drawn public atten-
tion, and stories about it have appeared in local newspapers. One vivid description
is the “3-no world” of private-sector wage labor: no definite working hours, no
medical insurance, and no labor contract [“wu ri ye, wu yi lao, wu shou xu,” (Lu
1989:418–19)].While state propertiesare becoming productiveassets forofficials’
and managers’ private gains (Lin & Zhang 1999, Lin 2000), the unprotected state
labor has begun to feel that they are truly proletarians (wu chan zhe). A new urban
poverty stratum is emerging from layoff labor and retired labor (Zhang 2000), and
labor opposition became a sensitive and serious issue in a changing structure of
state and society (Chan 1996).
THE EMBOURGEOISEMENT OF ADMINISTRATIVE AND MANAGERIAL CADRES Nee
& Lian’s (1994) opportunism model points to an embourgeoisement process in
which Communist cadres give up political commitments in order to catch op-
portunities in a growing marketplace. So (2001) argues that the statist society is
the trademark of China’s reforms, and only the cadres are in a historically strate-
gic position to develop a capitalist economy. Thus, the first decade of reforms
saw the rise of “local state corporatism” (Oi 1992), under which local govern-
ments became industrial firms while local officials either make capitalism “from
within” (Walder 1994) or create “network capitalism” (Boisot & Child 1996) by
taking advantage of their political and social capitals (Goodman 1996). During
the second decade of reform, assets and profits of state enterprises were massively
divertedintothe privatehandsof cadresthrough “informalprivatization,”organiza-
tional proliferation, consortium building, and “one manager, two businesses” (Nee
1992, Nee & Su 1998, Ding 2000a,b, Duckett 2001). The most recent move is a
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CHINESE STRATIFICATION AND MOBILITY 97
state-imposed property rights reform, letting administrative and managerial cadres
be the shareholders of the transformed state enterprises (Zhang 2000).
THE PATRONIZATION OF CAPITALIST ENTREPRENEURS This theme is implied in
the image of a statist society with a bourgeois cadre class (So 2001). Patron-
client ties with state officials were the hallmark of private entrepreneurs in Xiamen
(Wank 1999) and elsewhere (Li 1995). Nationally, registered private entrepreneurs
reached more than 2 million in 1997 and hired 12 million workers (SSB 1998:49).
These “business elites” are understandably weak politically, having no interest,
no autonomy, and no class capacity to work for the cause of a democratic state
and politics (Pearson 1997). Despite the conflict between Communist ideology
and capitalist ownership, Party Secretary General Jiang Zemin announced in his
First of July of 2001 speech a call to recruit party members from all social strata
including private entrepreneurs. Patronization may quickly change to a model of
political incorporation.
THE AMBIGUOUS CLASS STATUS OF INTELLECTUALS “Intellectuals”—professionals,
cultural elites, and technocrats—have always had an ambiguous class status
throughout post-revolution history (Kraus 1981). Intellectuals lost their slight au-
tonomyin the early1950swhen theywere totally organizedto work andlive within
the confines of the party-state (Davis 2000a). Politically, intellectuals were Mao’s
“stinkyold ninths” (“choulao jiu”), rankinglast among all nine“black” categories.
They were flattered and cheerful in 1979 when given a “working class” status by
Deng Xiaoping, for that status meant that intellectuals finally had become a “rev-
olutionary” class in the reform era (Huang 1993). But this did not matter much;
while intellectuals’ educational credentials keep them in a professional elite of
high prestige, they still have to pass political screening to gain material incentives
and especially political authority (Walder 1995). Huang (1993) sees Chinese intel-
lectuals divided between “in-institution” and “out-institution” groups, depending
on whether they work primarily within the state sector or outside it. This insti-
tutional boundary implies no anticipation that “out-institution” intellectuals are
“autonomous humanists” (zi you wen hua ren) who might otherwise work in an
independent sphere of civil society.
THE MIDDLE CLASSES State factory workers, because of their lifelong employ-
ment and a high level of benefits, were seen to be Mao’s “quasi middle class”
(Li 2001), and this once politically and economically protected group has become
differentiated in the reform era (Whyte 1999). Mao’s middle classes—managers
and professionals—were incorporated into the Communist order from the early
1950s onward (Davis 2000a), but in the reform era these two groups, along with
private entrepreneurs, appear to have become the central players in the rising mar-
ket economies in rural and urban China (Qin 1999:29–48). But China’s middle
classes today do not yet share a commonly recognized image of their counterparts
in an advanced capitalist society—a stable lifestyle, mainstream values, and active
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98 BIAN
political participation (Wright 1997:23–26). Instead, China’s middle classes live
on unstable sources of income (Qin 1999:65), have not yet developed a middle-
class identity or value system (So 2001), and lack political motivations to fight for
the birth of a civil society (Pearson 1997).
Looking Ahead
Insufficient research attention has been given to emerging social classes in ru-
ral and urban China, and existing analyses are hampered by the still evolving
nature of social and economic structures in which social classes are in the mak-
ing. Thus, insightful analysis and reliable assessments are to be called for from
future researchers. An important starting step is to get a clear picture about the
complex and, oftentimes, ambiguous property rights structures. While informa-
tion about property structures is essential for any class analysis (Wright 1997),
getting it is not easy. Walder & Oi (1999) have suggested a local approach and
have sketched a road map about the kinds of work needed. The next step is perhaps
to research labor-management-capital relations in the production system. One ex-
ample is Lee’s (1995, 1998, 2000) expanded case studies on gender and women
in south China, a work that extends from Burawoy’s (1985) analytic framework of
socialistworkingclass in Russia andEastern Europe. These initial stepsof original
researchshould lead to theoreticalsyntheses about howclass differentiationresults
in class conflict, class movements, or class politics in a new era. Such efforts have
already begun (Chan 1995, So 2001).
SOCIOECONOMIC INEQUALITIES
Overall Trend
Mao’s egalitarianism reduced socioeconomic inequalities (Parish 1981, 1984),
making China one of the most equalized among developing countries of the time
(Whyte& Parish 1984:44). Existingvariations in incomeand income-in-kind were
redistributiveinnature: They wereexplained byrural/urban identity,work unitsec-
tor and rank, job category and scale, political power, and age and seniority—a set
of variables that measure the main dimensions of a socialist status hierarchy. The
introductionof market mechanismsinsidework units andthe rise ofproduct,labor,
andcapital markets outsidework unitsboth redefined thesedimensions and created
new sources of inequality in post-Mao period. The system of socioeconomic strat-
ification remains mixed—continuation and change are the parallel stories about an
emerging new order. This can be seen in several areas of research: occupational
prestige, income distribution, housing and consumption, and gender inequality.
Occupational Prestige
The term occupational prestige was totally ignored in Maoist class theory in which
all occupations were said to be of equal status under state socialism (Kraus 1981).
This was, of course, not true. Data from Shanghai showed that despite a strong
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CHINESE STRATIFICATION AND MOBILITY 99
ideological influence, high school seniors held strong preferences for nonmanual
jobs over manual jobs (Lan & Chang 1982). Working adults, whether in China’s
capital, Beijing (Lin & Xie 1988), or an industrial city like Tianjin (Bian 1996),
had no problem rating job titles into a prestige scale, even when income variation
among occupations was small. When income variation grew substantially in the
1990s, a quasi-national sample showed similar scaling results (Zhe & Chen 1995).
Overall, variations in constructed prestige scales were attributable more to vari-
ation in education than in income, a pattern that was also observed in the more
industrialized, more globalized, capitalist Taiwan (Tsai & Chiu 1991).
Constructed prestige scales from these studies provided helpful measurement
tools for examining Chinese occupational hierarchies, making it possible for com-
parative analysis with the United States (Blau & Ruan 1990) and elsewhere.
Chinese prestige scales are comparable to those from the United States and to
an international scale (Treiman 1977), seemingly confirming theories of modern-
ization and societal convergence (Treiman 1970, Treiman & Yip 1989). These
interpretations, however, may have overlooked an important Chinese characteris-
tic: state allocation of resources led to the identification of work units, rather than
occupations, as the primary measure of social status (Lin & Bian 1991). Because
prestige scales are stable cross-nationally and over time, they are insensitive to the
political dimensions of social mobility peculiar to Communism (Walder 1985) and
tochanges broughtaboutby shiftingstate polices(Whyte &Parish1984, Zhouet al.
1996, 1997). In current research, both prestige scales and occupational categories
are utilized in empirical studies of Chinese social stratification and social mobility.
Income Distribution
From 1978 to 2000, the Chinese economy grew from one of the poorest to the
seventh largest in the world (World Bank, cited from New China Monthly 2001
[4]:141), per capita GDP grew by 5.2 times, and per-capita income had a net
increase of 4.7 times for rural residents and 3.6 times for urbanites (SSB 2000:56,
312). Much of this growth was generated in coastal areas, where a reoriented
central policy to prioritize developments there retained local savings and attracted
inflows of domestic and foreign investments. This resulted in increasing income
gaps between coastal and inland regions (Wang & Hu 1999). New riches grew
in coastal regions, but poverties persisted in inland areas (Lyons 1997). Overall,
income inequality grew considerably (Hauser & Xie 2001).
Scholarly research has been guided by an interest in changing mechanisms of
income distribution. This interest is intrinsically sociological, carrying Djilas’s
(1957) and Szel´enyi’s (1978) questions about the social structure of power and
inequality in state socialism to a changing system of social stratification under
reforms. Nee (1989, 1991, 1992, 1996) has made a bold statement about the direc-
tion of change, and his theory of market transition has spurred a lively and fruitful
debate about the social consequences of economic transformation. More elaborate
reviews of this debate are available in this journal (Nee & Matthews 1996) and
elsewhere (Szel´enyi & Kostello 1996, Nee & Cao 1999). The main theoretical
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100 BIAN
differences lie in how to conceptualize the nature and characters of economic
transformation. Is the transformation to be found in the shift of resource allocation
from state redistribution to market domination that leads to the decline of political
power and the rise of human capital and entrepreneurial abilities (Nee 1989)? Or
is it a result of dual transformation of economic and political institutions in which
both human capital and political power are rewarded (Bian & Logan 1996, Parish
& Michelson 1996, Zhou 2000)? Or is it ultimately a process of property rights
rearrangements that will have clear implications on income distribution (Walder
1994, 1996, Walder & Oi 1999)?
Accumulated research findings show that income returns for human capital and
entrepreneurship increase in rural and urban settings (see reviews by Nee & Cao
1999, Cao & Nee 2000), although these increases are small as compared to those
in advanced capitalist societies (Parish & Michelson 1996). Zhou (2000) notes an
interpretable difficulty of determining whether or not increasing returns to human
capital are uniformly attributable to market forces. In his view, both markets and
bureaucracies reward human capital and, empirically, the Chinese government has
inactuality madea continuouseffortto raisepay forstate officialsand professionals
during market reforms.
More serious controversial results are about returns to political power (Cao &
Nee 2000). The concept, however defined, is operationalized in one or all of the
following three ways: (a) party membership, (b) cadre position, past and present,
and (c) jobs with redistributive power. Limited by feasibility designs and sam-
ple sizes, researchers have not been able to partition cadre position into party
officials, government bureaucrats, and state enterprise managers; this makes it dif-
ficult to test hypotheses about whether “redistributors” gain or lose, relative to
“direct producers” or entrepreneurs and professionals, with market reforms. Be-
cause old-fashioned redistributors are increasingly irrelevant with time, such a test
is becoming practically unimportant. On the whole, income returns for rural and
urban cadres decline in the initial years of reform (Nee 1989, Walder 1990). How-
ever, in regions of “local state corporatism” (Oi 1992) rural cadres reap income
from profitable township and village industry (Peng 1992, Lin 1995, Cook 1998,
Lin & Chen 1999), while in the urban sector from the mid-1980s, cadres and party
members continue to gain rather than lose (Walder 1992, Bian & Logan 1996,
Zhou 2000). This persistent effect of power, along with increasing returns to edu-
cation, is also the case among Chinese elderly (Raymo & Xie 2000). These results
are largely reconfirmed with analyses of two national sampling surveys—Chinese
Household Income Project in 1988 and 1995 (Griffin & Zhao 1992, Khan et al.
1992, Zhao 1993, Khan & Riskin 1998, Parish & Michelson 1996, Xie & Hannum
1996, Tang & Parish 2000, Hauser & Xie 2001).
Housing and Consumption
Rural housing and consumption have not been given much scholarly attention.
Urban housing, however, has been both a serious problem and a focal point of
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CHINESE STRATIFICATION AND MOBILITY 101
observation about “socialist inequalities” (Szel´enyi 1983). Although basic low-
rent housing (1% to 2% of household income) was available to virtually all ur-
banites under Mao, public housing, which dominated the urban housing market
long before housing commodification of the mid-1990s, was constructed, owned,
or allocated by work units (Whyte & Parish 1984:77–79, Logan & Bian 1993,
Bian et al. 1997). People working in rich work units could easily get a comfort-
ably spacious apartment, while those in poor work units remained in near-slum
conditions (Lee 1988). Work units’ ability to provide housing varied between state
and collective sectors and with bureaucratic rank (Walder 1986, 1992, Bian 1994).
While work unit housing was allocated to satisfy needs (large or multigeneration
families were allocated first and got more total living space), spacious and quality
units were a work unit’s resources and served as incentives to reward political
and managerial authority, seniority, professional expertise, and social connections
(Logan et al. 1999, Tang & Parish 2000:89, Zhou & Suhomlinova 2001). In ad-
dition, cadres, professionals, and employees from high-ranking work units tended
to live in neighborhoods with proximity to leading public schools, piped gas fuel,
street parks, and other community resources (Logan & Bian 1993, Logan 2001).
This redistributive system had many unanticipated consequences, concisely
describedin Tang &Parish (2000:37),and since1988 theseignited severalwavesof
reformsto raise rents, to detachhousing from workunits,and finally to commodify
and privatize housing (Bian et al. 1997, Davis 2000c). While central and local
governments continue to be the main investor and constructor, a decisive State
Council’s Housing Reform Directive in 1998 required all new housing units to be
soldand purchasedat marketprices, terminatinga 50-yearsystem inwhich housing
was allocated basically as collective welfare (Jiang 2000). The newly rich have no
problem buying a home. As of 2000, a home of 100 square meters in an apartment
building in Beijing or Shanghai can cost 600,000 to 800,000 RMB easily, or 30
to 40 years of average income. There has been a trend to build luxurious homes
in a globalized Shanghai, as can be observed in real estate advertisements (Fraser
2000). Homes in city outskirts, smaller cities, and less developed inland cities are
considerably less expensive (Logan 2001).
Buyers with no cash ability can take mortgage loans from a designated state
bank to pay for a new home, but a prerequisite is that their work units or private
employers have deposited a proportion of employee income as housing reserve
funds in the bank on behalf of their employees. While government offices and
nonprofit organizations (containing 10% of state jobs) can secure such funds in
state budgetary allocations, state-owned firms (90% of state jobs) must do so on
their own and many, ironically, cannot—they are struggling to survive and keep a
payroll operating in an economy in which state-owned enterprises are increasingly
likely to lose any competitive edge to private ventures and foreign corporations
(Solinger 1999). A great many private firms and virtually all household businesses
probably do not invest such funds, either because they are unwilling to do so or
because their employees live in a “two-system family”—one spouse works in a
private sector job for high income and the other keeps his/her state job to secure
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102 BIAN
housing and medical benefits (Davis 1999). Predictably large numbers of families
maystillliveinoldhousing unitsbuiltbefore the1988 housingreformand areunder
the old redistributive system, although such an estimate is not readily available.
Research interest in urban consumption before reforms largely lay in economic
egalitarianism (Parish 1981, 1984), workers’ dependence on distribution of con-
sumer goods and services by bureaucratic fiat (Walder 1986), and variation by
work-unithierarchy and political power(Bian 1994:Chap. 8).More recent scholar-
ship is oriented to how reforms eroded these “redistributive” patterns (Tang &
Parish 2000). Yet there are new interest and observations about the ongoing con-
sumer revolution (Davis 2000b). Davis’s volume documents a decade of rising
consumerism and material culture (Table 1.1), which gave urban households great
autonomy in choosing how adults and children want to live in a consumer society.
Albeit preferences are diverse, inequalities remain primarily because of income
and social class (Yan 2000). Political power is coupled with entrepreneur’s money
in the pursuit of a luxurious leisure life, such as going bowling in nightclubs in
Shenzhen (Wang 2000).
Gender Inequality
Research on gender inequality has proliferated since 1980, but results remain
mixed and inconclusive (Entwisle & Henderson 2000). Recognizing significant
improvements in rural and urban women’s employment and income in Mao’s
era (Whyte 1984) and especially women’s gains in basic education (Hannum &
Xie 1994), researchers also find such progress fell short of a promised revolu-
tion for gender equalization due to the state’s limited capacities, shifting gov-
ernment policies, and a persistent patriarchal culture (Croll 1978, 1983, Stacey
1983, Wolf 1985). When evaluating the impact of post-1978 reforms on gender
inequality, their observations led to different conclusions about the direction of
change.
One observation is that the growth of market economies created off-farm em-
ployment opportunities for rural women, narrowed the gender gap in household
income contribution, and enhanced women’s status relative to men’s (Entwisle
et al. 1995, Matthews & Nee 2000, Michelson & Parish 2000). Another observa-
tion, mostly from the cities, is that as the market developed, it eroded the power of
the state both as employer and advocate of women’s rights, leading to labor market
discrimination against female workers in hiring and layoffs, job placement, and
wage determination in both state and nonstate sectors, thus lowering the economic
status of women relative to men (Honig & Hershatter 1988). Rising factory despo-
tism in the private sector is worsening the working conditions for south China
women, who are kept in heavy labor activities with long hours (Lee 1995). Simi-
lar depressing stories from rural China are that men are leading the expansion of
family businesses while women are left behind to specialize in agricultural jobs
(Entwisle et al. 1995). Yet a third observation is that in urban China gender gaps
in earnings and other work statuses have remained stable from the 1950s to the
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CHINESE STRATIFICATION AND MOBILITY 103
1990s (Bian et al. 2000). Intercity variation in labor market gender inequalities is
largely uncorrelated with measures of marketization (Shu & Bian 2001).
Inconsistent research findings may be explained at least on two levels, as pro-
posed by Whyte (2000). Substantively, they reflect the complexities of political,
social, and historical processes that show that conflicting and contradictory forces
can be in effect at the same time, producing such observable inconsistent patterns.
Methodologically, inconsistent findings reflect diverse research designs, data col-
lection methods, and measurements and indicators used from early studies to the
most recent. Lacking reliable data is probably the most serious problem, for data
are too often cross-sectional and gathered in one or two localities, thus preventing
any reliable assessments at the national level. Whyte’s suggestion is constructive:
Serious scholarly work that assesses the impact of reforms on gender inequal-
ity must carefully identify a realm of research, must utilize a well-defined set of
indicators and measures, and must rely on comparable and systematic data.
Aside from “objective” analyses is an approach to exploring the subjective
world of women—what do women think about their gender roles and their relative
status to men in the workplace and at home? Revisiting Mao’s female labor models
and “Iron Girls,” Hershatter (2000) and Honig (2000) found their stories far more
complicated than a party-state described line that women broke gender boundaries
in work; in fact traditional gender roles were accepted by many of these women.
Other interview data indicate that traditional gender roles might be rising in the
reformera; some womenfantasize about fleeing workand seeing women’s place as
beingprimarily inthefamily (Parish& Busse2000:212, Lee1998:34–35). Married
couples in Beijing feel that both household work and paid work contribute to a
collectivized family, and exchange between these two spheres is a fair trade even
if one spouse has to specialize in one of the spheres (Zuo & Bian 2001).
Looking Ahead
Occupationalprestige isnotsensitiveto institutionalchange butremainsa scholarly
tool for research of comparative social stratification of industrial societies. In light
of growing prosperity and rising consumerism in China, housing and consumption
are increasingly important aspects of socioeconomic inequality. However, reliable
and systematic information is unavailable about either housing or consumption.
Theresearchfield ofgender inequalityismuddy,asdiagnosed byWhyte (2000).All
theseresearch areas—housing, consumption,and gender inequality—alsodemand
theoretical perspectives and analytic frameworks to guide future studies.
Research on changing mechanisms of income distribution has been a rigorous
and fruitful program, making Chinese social stratification the subject of one of
the leading and lively debates in top sociological forums in the United States and
elsewhere. This program has been hampered badly, however. The key dependent
variable, income, is vulnerable to serious—probably systematic—measurement
errors, for conflicting institutional rules in a transitional economy make rural and
urban wage earners deliberately, and rationally, hide many sources of income that
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104 BIAN
are regularly not included in employee paychecks (pay slips), not to mention that
the newly rich conceivably want to lie about their unbelievable high income from
“gray” and “black” sources (Lin 2000) in any questionnaire survey. Income-in-
kind is still relevant, but even the three main items of income-in-kind—medical
insurance, pension, and labor insurance—have not been given sufficient research
yet. Equally problematic are the theoretical construct of redistributor, its operating
conceptof cadre, and themeasurement instruments of self-identifiedor researcher-
imposed categories of office authority, job duties, or political affiliation. These
researchtools areproblematic becausethe fast-changingeconomy makes“socialist
redistributors” increasingly irrelevant. One interesting line of analysis is about the
changing decision-making structure in firms in which local party apparatuses are
increasinglyless likely toplaya decisiverole (Opper etal. 2001). On theindividual
level, insightful studies should pay attention to the changing sources of power of
political, economic, and professional elites as well as of nonelite social groups.
SOCIAL MOBILITY
Overall Trend
It was rare to change an individual’s social position in Mao’s status hierarchy
becauseoftherigidinstitutional walls—therural-urbandivide,work unitboundary,
cadre-worker dichotomy, and political classification. Post-1978 market reforms
and the rise of labor markets eroded these institutional divides, making social
mobility a living experience for almost everyone. Millions of peasants now work
(in an informal sector) and live in towns and cities (Keister & Nee 2000), while
many of them had returned home to work in the cause of rural industrialization
(Ma 2001). Urbanites also searched for opportunities of economic prosperity by
migrating to developmental zones in coastal areas (Solinger 1999). Inter-firm and
inter-sector mobility, which was extremely difficult before reforms (Walder1986,
Davis 1990), is now very common; job change is either voluntary with the purpose
ofcareeradvancementorcoercivebecauseofmassivelayoffsororganizedtransfers
by state-owned enterprises (Solinger 2000). While these evolving trends call for
rigorous research, serious scholarly works have been published in three well-
defined areas of social mobility research: status attainment, career mobility, and
social networks in occupational processes.
Status Attainment
Standard status attainment models attribute a person’s attained status in society
to two theoretically distinctive causes: inheritance and achievement. In capitalist
societies, attained status is operationalized by the occupation of a wage job, status
inheritance is examined with reference to the effects of parental education and
occupation, and personal achievement is usually measured by education. When
these models are applied to China, three significant modifications are made, and
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CHINESE STRATIFICATION AND MOBILITY 105
all bring attention to the characters of the political economy of Communism. First,
legacies of the 1949 Communist revolution defined status inheritance in a politi-
cal perspective, making family class origin an important dimension of inheritance
in addition to parental education and occupation (Parish 1981, 1984, Whyte &
Parish 1984). Second, in a social structure of “principled particularism” (Walder
1986), personal achievement is politically evaluated by party authority; member-
shipin and loyalty tothe Party arequalitatively differentcredentials than education
(Walder 1985, 1995). Third, in a centrally planned economy, state redistributive
resources are differentially allocated through a hierarchy of state and collective
organizations (Walder 1992), thus workplace identification becomes a more pri-
mary criterion of social status than the occupation of wage work (Lin & Bian 1991,
Bian 1994).
Estimating these status attainment models requires census or survey data that
are extremely difficult to obtain in China even today. Earlier efforts by Parish
(1981, 1984) and Whyte & Parish (1984) were based on a “sample of neighboring
households” (581 families and 2865 members), established through interviewing
133 Chinese emigrants in Hong Kong. This sample found strong status inheri-
tance in educational attainment; children achieved higher education when their
fathers had higher education or high-income jobs. Family class origin was found
to significantly affect occupational attainment; one obtained a high-income job
when his/her father was a capitalist, merchant, or staff, rather than a worker or
peasant before the 1949 revolution. Finally, one’s education led to a high-income
job, but being a female was a disadvantage in both educational and occupational
attainments. All of these effects, however, became nil for the cohort of the Cultural
Revolution (1966 to 1976), a pattern that resulted from Mao’s policies of destratifi-
cation of the decade (Parish 1984). Davis (1992a), based on occupational histories
of over 1,000 individuals from 200 families in Shanghai and Wuhan, found that
as of the late 1980s the Cultural Revolution policies had reduced middle-class
reproduction, and more generally the bureaucratic allocation of labor and rewards
favored older birth cohorts or “first comers” (Davis-Friedmann 1985), into the
post-1949 Communist era.
Large-scale, representative sampling surveys began to be conducted by United
States–based sociologists in Chinese cities from 1985 onward, and they have en-
richedour understandingabout Chinesestatus attainmentprocesses. A1986 survey
of Tianjin showed that a decade after the Cultural Revolution neither father’s edu-
cation nor father’s occupation affected child’s job status and that occupational
attainment was a result of one’s own education, which seemingly implies an
opportunity structure in which status inheritance was eliminated (Blau & Ruan
1990). When work-unit sector was used instead as an indicator of attained status
in a 1985 survey of the same city, Lin & Bian (1991) found a strong father-son
link in work-unit sector and a strong sector-to-occupation link within the gen-
eration. This brought attention to the institution of state job assignments, exam-
ined in detail with a 1988 Tianjin survey by Bian (1994): Upon graduation from
school, youths were assigned employment by state labor bureaus to hierarchically
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106 BIAN
organized workplaces, where specific jobs were finally assigned. All of these three
Tianjin surveys showed that education and membership in the Communist party
increaseda person’schance of gettingassignedto a statesector job and thatwomen
were more likely to be allocated to collective-sector jobs with less pay and less
welfare benefits than their male counterparts.
A multicity sample by Zhou et al. (1996, 1997) broadened research scope
beyond the city of Tianjin. Their event history analyses show that a “distrusted”
family class origin significantly lowered one’s chance of getting a state-sector
job in all periods through 1993. A superior education increased one’s chance of
workingin public or governmentorganizations, where desirable jobswere located,
inall periods, buta college educationwasbecoming important forone’s attainment
of a party membership in the first decade of post-1978 reforms. A clear pattern
showedby Zhouet al.is that stratificationdynamics weregreatly alteredby shifting
state policies at all times. This reconfirms what Davis’s (1992a, 1992b) life history
analysis had earlier shown about the centrality of shifting state policies to patterns
of intergenerational as well as career mobility.
Career Mobility
Surveyfindings thateducation andpartymembership bothaffect statusattainments
have been carefully attended in a growing research program about paths of mobil-
ity into administrative and professional careers (Walder 1995). Much theoretical
tension originates from earlier studies of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
about the relationship between political loyalty and educational credential; rising
educational credentialism alters the political character of a Communist regime
and was seen as a cause for intellectuals “on the road to class power” (Konrad
& Szel´enyi 1979). Market reforms in China were seen by some as the hope for
change from virtuocracy to meritocracy (Shirk 1984, Lee 1991).
Arguing that Communist party membership and education are qualitatively
different credentials, Walder (1995) advanced a dual path model and examined
it with two sampling surveys. The 1986 Tianjin survey shows that individuals
with superior education move into a professional elite of high social prestige,
while individuals with both educational credential and party membership enter an
administrative elite with social prestige, authority, and material privileges (Walder
1995). The 1996 national survey of China provides more forceful results from an
event history analysis: professional and administrative careers have always been
separated from Mao’s era onward, party membership has never been a criterion for
the attainment of professional positions, and a college education did not become a
criterion for administrative position until the post-Mao period (Walder et al. 2000).
Party organization preferentially sponsors young members for adult education and
eventually promotes them into leadership positions (Li & Walder 2001).
Other studies along this line of inquiry point to both stability and change in
China’s politicized social mobility regime. Zang (2001) used scattered sources
to compile a unique profile of 757 (in 1988) and 906 (in 1994) central and
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CHINESE STRATIFICATION AND MOBILITY 107
local government officials. His models show that in both years college education
promotes a cadre to climb ladders in both party and state apparatuses, whereas
one’s seniority in the party “pushes” the person into the party hierarchy rather
than to state bureaucracy. Bian et al. (2001) argue that membership loyalty is an
organizational imperative and survival strategy of any Communist party and show
that in Tianjin and Shanghai political screening persisted from 1949 to 1993 in the
attainment of Party membership and in the promotion into positions of political
and managerial authority. Zhou (2001) argues that the political dynamics induced
by shifting state policies cause bureaucratic career patterns to vary over time, and
his 1994 multicity survey shows that Mao’s and post-Mao’s cohorts of Chinese
bureaucrats have distinctive characteristics. Cao’s (2001) comparative analysis of
Shanghai and Guangzhou shows a pattern of change within the state sector: While
in less marketized Shanghai human capital’s effects on career mobility are con-
stant between profit-oriented firms and nonprofit organizations, increased market
competition in Guangzhou leads to a finding that human capital is a stronger deter-
minant of the success of career mobility in profit-oriented firms than in nonprofit
organizations.
Social Networks in Occupational Processes
Status attainment models and career mobility models attribute persons’ opportu-
nities for upward mobility to their positional power and qualifications. A network
perspective differs; it considers mobility opportunities as a function of informa-
tion and influence that are embedded in and mobilized from one’s social networks
(Granovetter 1973, Lin 1982). This network perspective fits well a relational Chi-
nese culture of guanxi, or interpersonal connections of sentiments and obligations
thatdictate social interactionand facilitate favorexchangesin Chinese society,past
and present (Liang [1949] 1986, Fei [1949] 1992, King 1985). In post-revolution
China,guanxi became more instrumentallyorientedin order forsomeoneto secure
opportunities under party clientelism in the workplace (Walder 1986) or to break
free of bureaucratic boundaries to obtain state redistributive resources (Gold 1985,
Yang 1994), such as jobs. Indeed, guanxi networks were found to promote job
and career opportunities for guanxi users, while constraining those who are poorly
positioned in the networks of social relationships (Bian 1997).
Guanxi networks have been found to facilitate all three aspects of occupational
process: entry into the labor force, inter-firm mobility, and reemployment after
being laid off. On entry into the labor force, data from two Tianjin surveys show
that use of guanxi networks increased from 40% in the 1960s and 1970s to 55%
in the 1980s (Bian 1994:102), and to 75% in the 1990s when labor markets finally
emerged (Bian & Zhang 2001). On inter-firm mobility, the same Tianjin surveys
show a similar but sharper trend: Only half the workers had changed jobs prior to
1988, and half of them used guanxi networks to do so; by 1999 around 80% of
current employees had changed jobs, and only a slight fraction did not use guanxi
networks (Bian & Zhang 2001). Another Tianjin study shows that laid-off workers
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108 BIAN
in textile factories changed jobs through inter-industry ties to get reemployed in
a nontextile entity (Johnson 2001). Laid-off workers in Wuhan were reemployed
more quickly and matched to jobs with higher income when they had broader and
more resourceful networks (Zhao 2001:68).
All of these studies show that guanxi contacts are predominantly relatives and
friendsof high intimacytoguanxi users, butwhen they areacquaintances or distant
friends, connections are made through intermediaries to whom both guanxi users
and contacts are strongly tied (Bian 1997). This is in sharp contrast to western
countries, where weak ties of infrequent interaction and low intimacy are more
frequently used than stronger ties (see reviews by Granovetter 1995, Lin 1999).
This cross-national difference is due, argues Bian (1997), to different resources
being mobilized through networks: Weak ties in western countries are used to
learn information about job openings, whereas strong ties in China are meant to
secure influence from authorities that was more difficult to obtain. In a rising labor
market, guanxi ties of varying strengths may be aimed at both information and
influence, and ties that provide both influence and information, rather than either,
may allow someone to complete a successful search, a hypothesis that waits for
empirical testing.
Looking Ahead
The three lines of scholarly work—status attainment, career mobility, and roles
of social networks in occupational processes—are all guided by theoretical agen-
das in comparative social mobility, promoting our understanding about the social
and political characters of a durable Communist regime. Understandably, research
findings are constructed or patterned to a scholarly flavor in order to test hypothe-
ses derived from existing theories. China is an evolving world where tremendous
transformations surface in many directions. Massive migration from rural to urban
areas and between economic sectors opens opportunities of mobility in an econ-
omy of growing inter-region variation. Large layoffs and organized transfers of
state-sector workers are a social experiment of institutional change and industrial
restructuring, providing unique data about downward and upward mobility. Be-
cause paths to economic prosperity or to socially determined poverty in a society
of growing differentiation and uncertainty are not always in a predictable pattern,
more research, requiring a grounded approach and creative minds, is called for.
CONCLUSION
Chinese social stratification and social mobility will remain one of the most in-
teresting areas of sociological research in the decades ahead. China presents an
unusual research field of sociological experiments for many questions about class
stratification, socioeconomic inequalities, and social mobility. A great amount of
original research has promoted our understanding about status groups before post-
1978 reforms, but significantly less attention has been paid to emerging social
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CHINESE STRATIFICATION AND MOBILITY 109
classes in rural and urban China today. This is partly because property rights ar-
rangements in the production system, which are key to any rigorous assessment
about class stratification, are highly complicated and ambiguous, partly because
social classes are in the making and do not yet show clear class boundaries. Theo-
retically exciting research has instead been conducted about human and political
mechanisms of income distribution, housing acquisition, and gender inequality in
thereform era. There isequally impressiveresearch output aboutstatus attainment,
career mobility into elite groups, and social network approaches to occupational
processes. Despite these achievements, China’s evolving political and economic
institutions conceivably create uncertainties and unpredictable patterns, calling for
grounded research from which to generate new theoretical perspectives that will
help us understand and explain agents, sources, and mechanisms of change in the
system of social stratification and social mobility.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Preparation of this chapter was supported by two grants from Hong Kong’s Re-
search Grants Committee (HKUST6052/98H, HKUST6007/00H) and a Postdoc-
toral Matching Grant from the Vice-President for Academic Affairs, Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology (2000–2002). I am grateful to the many
authors for making available their work for this review essay, to Zhanxin Zhang
for his able research assistance, and to Karen Cook, Deborah Davis, Joe Galas-
kiewicz,VictorNee, XueguangZhou,andJiping Zuofor theirvaluable suggestions
and comments while I developed ideas and early drafts for this chapter.
The Annual Review of Sociology is online at http://soc.annualreviews.org
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P1: FRK
June 10, 2002 12:5 Annual Reviews AR163-FM
Annual Review of Sociology
Volume 28, 2002
CONTENTS
Frontispiece—Stanley Lieberson x
PREFATORY CHAPTER
Barking Up the Wrong Branch: Scientific Alternatives to the Current
Model of Sociological Science, Stanley Lieberson and Freda B. Lynn 1
THEORY AND METHODS
From Factors to Actors: Computational Sociology and Agent-Based
Modeling, Michael W. Macy and Robert Willer 143
Mathematics in Sociology, Christofer R. Edling 197
Global Ethnography, Zsuzsa Gille and Se´
an ´
O Riain 271
Integrating Models of Diffusion of Innovations: A Conceptual
Framework, Barbara Wejnert 297
Assessing “Neighborhood Effects”: Social Processes and New
Directions in Research, Robert J. Sampson, Jeffrey D. Morenoff,
and Thomas Gannon-Rowley 443
The Changing Faces of Methodological Individualism, Lars Udehn 479
SOCIAL PROCESSES
Violence in Social Life, Mary R. Jackman 387
INSTITUTIONS AND CULTURE
Welfare Reform: How Do We Measure Success? Daniel T. Lichter
and Rukamalie Jayakody 117
The Study of Islamic Culture and Politics: An Overview and
Assessment, Mansoor Moaddel 359
POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY
Financial Markets, Money, and Banking, Lisa A. Keister 39
Comparative Research on Women’s Employment, Tanja van der Lippe
and Liset van Dijk 221
DIFFERENTIATION AND STRATIFICATION
Chinese Social Stratification and Social Mobility, Yanjie Bian 91
v
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2002.28:91-116. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org
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June 10, 2002 12:5 Annual Reviews AR163-FM
vi CONTENTS
The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences, Mich`
ele Lamont
and Vir´
ag Moln´
ar 167
Race, Gender, and Authority in the Workplace: Theory and
Research, Ryan A. Smith 509
INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY
Reconsidering the Effects of Sibling Configuration: Recent
Advances and Challenges, Lala Carr Steelman, Brian Powell,
Regina Werum, and Scott Carter 243
Ethnic Boundaries and Identity in Plural Societies, Jimy M. Sanders 327
POLICY
Ideas, Politics, and Public Policy, John L. Campbell 21
New Economics of Sociological Criminology, Bill McCarthy 417
HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY
The Sociology of Intellectuals, Charles Kurzman and Lynn Owens 63
INDEXES
Subject Index 543
Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 19–28 565
Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 19–28 568
ERRATA
An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Sociology chapters
(if any, 1997 to the present) may be found at http://soc.annualreviews.org/
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2002.28:91-116. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org
by University of Minnesota - Twin Cities - Wilson Library on 08/19/10. For personal use only.
