Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.9, 2014

From “State and Society” to “Institutions and Life”: the Changing Perspective of Research on Social Changes in China

(Abstract)

Xiao Ying

“State and society” has been the dominant perspective of research on social change in China in recent years among both domestic and overseas academics, but as used in China, this perspective is mostly at the normative level; it has difficulty in explaining the complex mechanisms of social change in China. “Institutions and life” could offer a substitute perspective. “Institutions” refers to the formal institutions set up in the name of the state and covers the functions carried out by the agents of the state at all levels and in all departments, while “life” refers to the daily activities of social man, including claims of all kinds on interests, powers and rights and the life strategies and techniques derived from rights and interests. At the same time, it involves relatively routinized popular sentiment and customary law. The construction and application of the “institutions and life” perspective aims to observe the complex mechanisms of the interplay between formal agents of the state in their institutional practice and people as independent actors in their lives, so as to analyze the actual logic and direction of the changes in China’s formal institutions and look for the mechanisms behind changes in popular sentiment, with a view to grasping the overall themes of modern Chinese nation-building.