Abstract
Through the in-depth analysis of the features of Huabei rural industrialization, the unique factory regime in Baigou, Hebei, and the resulting special workers, this paper reveals two dilemmas the migrant workers in Baigou and larger Hubei area face: Because of the interpersonal network of labor market, personalized trade, familial labor process, and patrimonial management, the workers are unable to become either industrial working class or citizens. Facing this special group of workers, we still believe in their power of self-liberation. Drawing on Touraine’s action sociology and sociological intervention, and Burawoy’s public sociology and praxis-oriented research, we modify “sociological intervention” according to the reality of Chinese society and propose the methodology of “strong sociological intervention” whose vehicle is “Baigou Migrant Worker Night School.” The night school provided workers with courses of labor law, English, and computer based on their actual needs. Labor law is the core to evoke the self-consciousness of the workers. Through communications in the night school and workers’ real living circumstances, we collected their true information and treated it as the source of sociological knowledge. After three sessions of night school training, workers showed changes in skills, social, and psychological aspects, laying a foundation for the growth of self-consciousness.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
“We” refers to the research team of public sociology project consisted of teachers and students from department of sociology, law school and micro-electronic institute in Tsinghua University, China. Professor Shen Yuan from sociology department is the leader of the team, and he is a devoted public sociologist specialized in labor and social movement study. This project is a team effort. The author was a student of Prof. Shen, and is now studying at University of California, Berkeley.
Source of information: http://www.bdlyj.gov.cn/gaikuang/gaobeidian/g1.asp
References
Burawoy, M. (1985). The politics of production: Factory regimes under capitalism and socialism. London: Verso.
Burawoy, M. (2003). For a sociological Marxism: The complementary convergence of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi. Politics and Society, 31(2), 193–261.
Burawoy, M. (2005a). For public sociology. American Sociological Review, 70, 4–28.
Burawoy, M. (2005b). Third-wave sociology and the end of pure science. The American Sociologist, 152–165.
Burawoy, M. (2005c). The critical turn to public sociology. Critical Sociology, 31(3), 313–326.
Burawoy, M. (2006). A public sociology for human right. Introduction to Judith Blau and Keri Iyall-Smith, public sociologies reader.. UK: Rowman and Littlefield.
Chakrabarty, D. (1989). Rethinking working class history. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Deutscher, T. (2002). Gazing at the disciplinary bellybutton: A review essay on ‘liberation sociology.. Contemporary Sociology, 31(4), 379–382.
Feagin, J. R., & Vera, H. (2001). Liberation sociology. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Hsiao-Chuan, H. (2003). The localization of praxis-oriented research: The case of ‘foreign brides literacy programs’. Taiwan: A radical Quarterly in Social Studies, 49, 1–48.
Nee, V., & Stark, D. (1989). Toward an institutional analysis of state socialism. Remaking the economic institutions of socialism: China and Eastern Europe. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Polanyi, K. (1944). The great transformation. New York: Farrar and Rinehart.
Shen, Y. (2006a). Social transformation and the re-formation of working class. Sociological Studies, 2, 13–36.
Shen, Y. (2006b). Strong sociological intervention and weak sociological intervention: Two approaches of sociological intervention. Sociological Studies, 5, 1–25.
Sun, L. (2003). Cleavage—Chinese society since 1990s. Beijing: Social Sciences Documentation Publishing House.
Tong, G. (2005). Family factory workers in Bei Township. Collection of Master Dissertation of Peking, Tsinghua and Renmin Univeristy. Shandong: Shandong People’s Press.
Touraine, A. (1965). Sociologie de L’ Action. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
Touraine, A. (1981). The voice and the eye: An analysis of social movements. Translated by Alan Duff. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Touraine, A. (1987). Return of the actor. Translated by Myrna Godzich and Foreword by Stanley Aronowitz. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hu, L. Doing Public Sociology in the Field—A Strong Sociological Intervention Project in China. Am Soc 38, 262–287 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-007-9014-x
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-007-9014-x