About the Webinar
Global trends of fertility decline, population aging, and rural outmigration are creating pressures to consolidate school systems, with the rationale that economies of scale will enable higher quality education to be delivered in an efficient manner, despite longer travel distances for students. Yet, few studies have considered the implications of system consolidation for educational access and inequality, outside of the context of developed countries. This talk will consider the impact of educational infrastructure consolidation on educational attainment using the case of China’s rural primary school closure policies in the early 2000s. The talk will share findings related to gender and ethnic disparities in the implications of consolidation for educational attainment.

About the Speaker
Emily Hannum is Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean for Social Sciences in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests are poverty and child welfare, gender and ethnic stratification, and sociology of education. Current projects in China include studies of childhood poverty and inequality, environmental inequality and infant and child welfare, and the impact of large-scale school consolidations on educational attainment. She is also working on comparative analyses of school performance, with attention to disparities associated with family separation, family background, and gender. Recent publications include “Education in East Asian Societies: Postwar Expansion and the Evolution of Inequality” (2019, Annual Review of Sociology, with Hiroshi Ishida, Hyunjoon Park, and Tony Tam); “Differences at the Extremes? Gender, National Contexts, and Math Performance in Latin America” (2020, American Educational Research Journal, with Ran Liu and Andrea Alvarado-Urbina); and “Estimating the Effects of Educational System Consolidation: The Case of China’s Rural School Closure Initiative” (forthcoming, Economic Development and Cultural Change, with Xiaoying Liu and Fan Wang).

About the Webinar
How do ordinary people in other countries view China?  Public opinion is a social fact that needs to be documented and interpreted.  In this lecture, Professor Yu Xie will present findings from his empirical research drawing on different data sources that attempts to understand recent trends in attitudes towards China in many countries, particularly the United States.

About the Speaker
Yu Xie is Bert G. Kerstetter ’66 University Professor of Sociology and has a faculty appointment at the Princeton Institute of International and Regional Studies, Princeton University. He is also Distinguished Fellow and Adjunct Professor at Department of Sociology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), and Visiting Chair Professor of the Center for Social Research, Peking University. His main areas of interest are social stratification, demography, statistical methods, Chinese studies, and sociology of science. His recently published works include: Marriage and Cohabitation (University of Chicago Press 2007) with Arland Thornton and William Axinn, Statistical Methods for Categorical Data Analysis with Daniel Powers (Emerald 2008, second edition), and Is American Science in Decline? (Harvard University Press, 2012) with Alexandra Killewald. Xie’s main areas of interest are social stratification, demography, statistical methods, Chinese studies and sociology of science. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academia Sinica and the National Academy of Sciences.

About the Webinar

We are continually surprised that waves of collective protest take us by surprise. In 2020, the killing of one man in Minnesota mobilized half a million Americans to take to the streets on a single day. How have sociologists of social movements explained these upsurges of protest? What regularities can be discerned across different movements and varied political contexts? How does these regularities illuminate the social mechanisms underlying protest? My talk will draw on various historical episodes, from riots in the early 19th century to the protests following the death of George Floyd.

About the Speaker

Professor Michael Biggs is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St Cross. His research on social movements addresses two different themes: the volatility of protest waves and self-inflicted suffering as protest. He has published in American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, European Sociological Review, Politics and Society, and Mobilization.

Abstract of the talk

The rise in on-person household (OPH) is exerting a powerful influence on many aspects of modern lives. In this seminar, the speaker will show the prevalence and characteristics of those who will live alone in China in the next three decades based on the projections using the ProFamy Extended Cohort-component Method. Distinct from traditional household projection methods, ProFamy is an individual- based macro-simulation method, which simulates the changes of households based on individuals grouped by age, sex, race, marital/union status, parity, and number of co-residing children/parents, rural/urban residence. Results show that OPH will more than double from 2010 to 2050, to hit about 133 million in China by 2050. Approximately one in four Chinese households will have only one resident. The most rapid growth will be among the oldest-olds and the largest solo-living subgroup will be the unmarried urban youth, many of whom are highly educated.

About the speaker

Wei-Jun Jean Yeung is Provost’s Chair Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of the Centre for Family and Population Research at the National University of Singapore. She is a council member of the Asian Population Association and of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Family. She has published extensively in leading journals on population, family, and social inequality and received many prestigious awards. Her recent research includes those that examine the global family changes, productive aging, youth labor markets, migration, marriage, and children’s well-being in Asia.

Abstract of the talk

As a reflection of social norms towards childbearing, the ideal number of children is crucial to project the long-term fertility trend. Comparing China and other selected countries, our results show that the average ideal family size is much lower among Chinese women aged between 18 and 49. We also observe high one-child and low 3-or-more-children intentions in China. Capitalizing on the 2018 China Family Panel Study, we examine the effects of macro-level contextual factors on the ideal number of children in China. Results show that the higher economic development level, higher income inequality level, lower total fertility rate, and higher educational competition level will lead to smaller ideal family size. The mediation analysis shows that contextual fertility level and educational pressure are more important in shaping Chinese people’s ideal family size. Our study implies that fertility attitudes should be understood by taking the historical, cultural, and social context into account.

About the speaker

Jia Yu is an assistant professor of Center for Social Research at Peking University in Beijing, China. Her research interest lies in marriage and family, gender inequality, and social stratification in China. Her work about family and gender in China has appeared in journals such as Demography, Population and Development Review, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Chinese Sociological Review.

Abstract

In this study I re-examine and reinterpret the prevailing image of fragmented authoritarianism in China in the theoretical framework of “loose coupling” in organizational analysis. In contrast to the rational model of organizations, the “loose coupling” model argues that organizations are often characteristic of a loosely coupled system in which different elements are responsive to one another but in ways that are often delayed, imprecise, and preserve their own identities and autonomy. I identify the institutional mechanisms that cultivate and reproduce the loose-coupling phenomena in the Chinese bureaucracy, despite the tremendous efforts of the Leninist party organization to reshape it into a tightly-coupled system. Empirical evidence from patterns of personnel flow in the large Chinese bureaucracy and fieldwork observations are used to illustrate this line of arguments and to make sense of the observed bureaucratic behaviors.

Biography

Xueguang Zhou is the Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Economic Development, a professor of sociology and a senior fellow at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. His main area of research is institutional changes in contemporary Chinese society, focusing on Chinese organizations and management, social inequality, and state-society relationships. His ongoing research projects focus on (1) personnel flow and personnel management practice in the Chinese bureaucracy; (2) historical origins and evolution of institutions of governance in China.

Abstract of the talk

Following the end of the one-child-policy in China in 2016 and the gradual relaxation of only-one child per family in selected areas prior to that, family composition and relationship dynamics,  specially siblings relationship within the Chinese familial context has gone through a rapid growth and some significant changes as a result of the introduction of the two-child policy. This policy  hange, leading to the possibility of adding another child into the family may have profound implications on the family system, its functioning and care relations among those living in China.

This presentation will review empirical findings to answer two questions: How do Chinese parents raise two children within a family? Does parents’ own sibling status matter?

About the speaker

Bin-Bin Chen, PhD, is an Associate Professor at Department of Psychology, Fudan University, China. His research interests include various aspects of family relationships and the social and  motional development of child and adolescent. He is also the Principal Investigator of the Fudan Sibling Project (FSP), a longitudinal investigation exploring changes in family functioning and the firstborn’s adjustment after the birth of a second child, which has received funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China. He has publications in journals such as Developmental Psychology, Development and Psychopathology, Journal of Research on Adolescence, and Child Development Perspectives. He was the 2017 recipient of Chinese Young Scholar Award, The 10th Conference for Chinese Psychologist.

Abstract of the talk

Background: Although welfare programs in China provide a safety net for low-income people by directly lifting their incomes, receiving benefits has the potential to affect recipients’ mental health because of the demanding and demeaning means-testing application process required by Chinese policy makers. However, little research has
examined the relationship between welfare participation and mental health symptoms-particularly those of depression-among Chinese youth. This study aims to examine the relationship between family participation in the Dibao income-assistance program in China and symptoms of depression among youth.

Methods: This study used a youth sample (n=4,192) of nationally representative data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) survey. Multiple imputation was used to deal with missing data. Propensity score matching based on the imputed datasets was used to reduce the selection bias of the two groups (Dibao recipients vs non-Dibao). The imputed data was analyzed using aggregated robust multiple regression. The Center for Epidemiological Studies depression scale (CESD-20) was used to measure depression symptoms. In addition, a variety of subgroup analyses were conducted to explore whether the relationship between Dibao participation and symptoms of depression differs significantly by the sociodemographic characteristics.

Results: Youth whose families received Dibao assistance had significantly greater risk for symptoms of depression compared to peers who did not receive assistance. Results also showed that young women- especially young mothers-whose families participated in the Dibao program in rural areas were at significantly higher risk compared to others.

Conclusion and Discussion: The relationship between welfare participation and symptoms of depression varies significantly by the characteristics of youths and their families. As a marker for collective disadvantage and adversity, welfare participation warrants research to study program processes and to distinguish pathways-possibly differentiated by gender-that may elevate risk for depression among Dibao program recipients.

About the speaker

Dr. Shiyou Wu is an Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work at Arizona State University. Wu has been involved in interdisciplinary collaborative research locally, nationally, and internationally, using a social determinants of health framework and a person-in-environment perspective to explore the multi-level (individual, interpersonal, household, community, societal) determinants of youth behavioral health outcomes, especially among youth from impoverished families (e.g., welfare recipients).

Abstract

Using data from the 2000 and 2009 National Surveys of Family and Economic Conditions in Japan, (N = 2,202) we examine the relationship between knowing someone engaged in “innovative” family behaviors and attitudes toward such behaviors. We extend existing research on this topic in three ways: 1) by adding a longitudinal component that allows us to estimate a fixed-effects model that controls out the influence of unmeasured, time-invariant factors likely to be related to both knowing and attitudes, 2) examining whether know behaviors themselves, or relationship domains, are the more salient predictor of attitudes, and 3) by focusing more explicitly on gender differences. We find that, net of unmeasured time-invariant characteristics, knowing a friend or co-worker who engaged in innovative family behaviors is associated with a significant change toward more non-traditional attitudes, and more so for women than for men.

Biography

Martin Piotrowski is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma. He received his PhD in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2006 and was trained at the Carolina Population Center (CPC). He is a demographer specializing in quantitative methods and conducts research on aspects of rural-to-urban migration, marriage and fertility, and familial and gender attitudes especially in parts of Asia. He has done research in countries experiencing large-scale socioeconomic change including Thailand, Nepal, China, and Japan and has explored topics involving inter-generational and family relations, household structures, and life course transitions. He has published widely in sociology, family, and demography journals including Social Science Research, Journal of Marriage and Family, Population Studies, European Journal of Population, and others.

Jeffrey Guhin Assistant Professor at The University Of California, Los Angeles Rachel Rinaldo Associate Professor at The University Of Colorado Boulder September 25, 2020 (Friday) 11:00am HKT Via Zoom For Research Postgraduate Students (Mphil/Phd) Of Our Department Contact us at fjolivos@link.cuhk.edu.hk Or kelvinlam@link.cuhk.edu.hk if you are interested to join the seminar. We look forward to meeting you.

Xueguang Zhou is Professor of Sociology and Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Economic Development and FSI Senior Fellow at Stanford University. His main area of research is institutional changes in contemporary Chinese society, focusing on Chinese organizations and management, social inequality, and state-society relationships.

Organizational approaches to social phenomena have become a major research paradigm since the 1980s, partly because the field of organizational research has matured, with rich theoretical models and analytical tools accumulated, and partly because contemporary society has become increasingly structured by formal organizations and are hence subject to organizational analysis.

This workshop introduces organizational approaches to selected, substantive areas of sociological inquiry. The goal of this workshop is to focus on some classical ideas in the literature and introduce the kind of research issues, theoretical models, and analytical concepts in organizational research and their applications in selected areas.

Sessions

1.Seminar 1. Organizational approaches: An overview. August 10, 9am – 12pm HK

2.Seminar 2. Organizational approaches to state building & bureaucracy. August 12, 9am – 12pm HKT

3.Seminar 3. Organizational approach to stratification & inequality. August 14, 9am – 12pm HKT.

4.Seminar 4. Organizational approach to social movements.  August 17, 9am – 12pm HKT

Practical Sessions. Before 4 September 2020, exact dates yet to be confirmed.

1.Project preparation and consultation

2.Project presentation and discussion

Eligibility

RPg students of Department of Sociology, CUHK

Parent Academy of Hong Kong Education City co-organised a Parent Seminar: Liberal Studies in Everyday Life with Hong Kong Liberal Studies Teachers’ Association on 4 July 2015. Prof. Stephen Wing-kai CHIU of our Department gave a talk entitled “Do’s and Don’ts for Parents of Liberal Studies Students” during the seminar. The talk was delivered to parents to explain the role of them in their children’s Liberal Studies learning. Around 150 parents participated in this seminar and shared their experiences with Prof. Chiu.

The Department is privileged to have invited Prof. Martin K. Whyte, John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and Sociology at Harvard University, and Prof. Deborah Davis, Professor of Sociology at Yale University, as guest speakers for the Sociology Distinguished Lecture entitled “Family Transitions in China since 1949” on 8 January 2015. Prof. Whyte presented a lecture on “Understanding Family Change Patterns in the PRC”. Prof. Davis presented a lecture on “Sociologists Look East: How Empirical Evidence on Chinese Families Can Challenge Dominant Assumptions and Paradigms in the Study of Marriage and the Family”. The lecture drew an audience of over 100 participants.

Prof. Salvatore Babones, Associate Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney, visited the Department and presented a talk on “Interpretive Approaches to Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences” on 27 November 2014. Prof. Babones also conducted a workshop on “Publishing in International Journals in Sociology” for postgraduate students of the Department on 2 December 2014.

Prof. Guang Guo, Dr. George and Alice Welsh Distinguished Professor of Sociology at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, visited the Department and presented a public seminar on “Sociology and Genomic Research” on 13 October 2014.

Department of Sociology organized a workshop entitled “Cybercrime: Evolution and International Response” on 19 September 2014. Prof. Peter Grabosky, Emeritus Professor at Australian National University gave a presentation on “The Evolution of Cybercrime, 2004-2014”, and Prof. Gregor Urbas, Associate Professor of Law at University of Canberra, gave a presentation on “Responding to Cyber-Attacks: The role of International and Domestic Law”. Dr. Laurie Lau, Honorary Research Fellow of the Pearl River Delta Social Research Centre of the Department , served as the moderator of the workshop.

Prof. Frank Dobbin, Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, visited the Department and presented a public seminar on “Too Small to Regulate?: The Crisis and the Failure of Shareholder Value” on 5 September 2014.

Prof. Michèle Lamont, Professor of Sociology and African and African American Studies and Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies at Harvard University, visited the Department and presented a public seminar on “The Quest for Equality and Respect: Responding to Stigmatization and Discrimination in United States, Brazil and Israel” on 2 September 2014.

Prof. Lingxin Hao, Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, visited the Department and presented a talk on “China’s Rural-Urban Migration and Children’s Access to Compulsory Education: Policy Evolution and Consequences” on 11 August 2014