Filial Obligation in Contemporary China: Evolution of the Culture‐System

Family obligation, which has an exceptionally high salience in traditional Chinese society, continues to be significant in contemporary China. In family relations in particular sentiments and practices morphologically similar to those associated with xiao (filial piety) remains intact in so far as an enduring set of expectations concerning age‐based obligation continues to structure behavior toward others. Researchers pursuing the theme of “individualization” in Chinese society, on the other hand, argue that family obligations and filial sentiments have substantially weakened. The present paper will show that under conditions of cultural and social change in China filial behavior through family obligation continues to play an important role even though the conventions associated with the relevant expectations, attitudes and emotions have undergone significant change. The paper argues that the culture‐system develops not merely through an internal dynamic and that family obligation must be understood in terms of the social and material context in which it operates and the nature of the motivations and imagery of the people that practice it.     

Social Citizenship Rights and the Welfare Circle Dilemma: Attitudinal Findings of Two Chinese Societies

This paper places social citizenship momentum into the context of squaring the welfare circle for examination. Citizenship is a powerful world-level organizing principle especially by the minority groups for their claim of equal treatment. The squaring of welfare circle refers to the need of the governments to constrain their budgets but also meet the rising demands from and needs of their people. This comparative study looks at the attitudinal findings of two Chinese societies of Hong Kong and Taiwan to see whether or not the cultural factor can mitigate the momentum of social citizenship rights and the demand side of the welfare circle. Implications for social policy are also discussed.     

Cultural Traditions and the Scandinavian Social Policy Model

This article assesses the extent to which cultural interpretation may be useful in understanding social policy models. By surveying cultural traditions, the study explores the context in which the Scandinavian social policy model was developed. The study investigates the institutional legacies of Scandinavian agrarian societies and identifies certain cultural traits, making observations as to their implications for the social policy model. The study does not intend to establish any “causal relation” between specific historical phenomena and the modern welfare states, but regards cultural traditions as forming the “contextual basis” for the operation of a welfare state system. Hence this is not merely a case study of Scandinavia, but a methodological undertaking that could play a significant role in broadening the scope of the study of social policy.     

Putting the parity into service‐user participation: An integrated model of social justice

Models of service‐user participation have derived from citizenship or consumerist agendas, neither of which has achieved the structural reforms important for the most marginalised social work clients. This article proposes Fraser's model of ‘parity of participation’ as an appropriately multifaceted frame for capturing the social justice aspirations of service‐user participation. A qualitative case study compared the experiences and expectations of people who had used Australian mental health services with a sample who had used Australian homelessness services to examine their expectations of participation at individual and representative levels. The findings reinforce concerns from Fraser's research about the tendency for identity‐based consumerist notions of participation to reify group identity. This leads to tokenistic service‐user involvement strategies that have little impact on participation at a structural level. Fraser's parity of participation is shown to have untested potential to reshape service‐user participation to meet the social justice aspirations of social work clients. Key Practitioner Message: ● Innovative, service‐user driven strategies for collaboration will be those which challenge existing power structures; ● Service users want their contributions to decision making to generate identifiable change in the system of social services; ● The success of service‐user participation strategies might be the extent to which political, economic and cultural opportunities are enhanced.     

世界工厂的“中国特色”：新时期工人状况的社会学鸟瞰

面对新时代的劳工问题,特别是“新生代农民工”问题,经典理论遭遇“中国特色”的诸多挑战。本文从社会结构性视角探讨权力、资本和劳工的关系与互动,讨论在中国特定的制度背景与转型过程中,工人阶级的形成与公民社会的生成有着怎样的关系。研究认为,对工人而言,公民的基本权利就体现为各项劳动权利的实现和保障、劳工的组织化权利的落实;公民权利是工人阶级形成的前提条件,劳工阶级的出路在于形成自主的社会力量。工人的公民化过程,劳工权利亦即公民权利的获得与保护是解决劳资矛盾和转型正义的根本途径。就劳工问题而言,以能动社会的建设为先导,同时推进公民社会的建设,也许更为可行。     

Universal ideals and particular constraints of social citizenship: the Chinese experience of unifying rights and responsibilities

This study looks at the perceptions of citizens in a modern Chinese society and explores whether social rights and responsibilities are unified at both ideal and practice levels. It finds that the conception that the Chinese have a weak image of social rights is no longer true. The Chinese are generally 'right-deficit' at the practice level. It is also found that there are wide gaps between ideal rights and practice rights, and between ideal responsibilities and practice responsibilities, except in components affected by cultural, contextual and institutional factors. The findings suggest that, for a full understanding of social citizenship, it is necessary to look at both ideal and practice levels of social citizenship. Cultural, contextual and institutional factors are identified as moderating people's behaviour and preferences in regard to social citizenship.     

Popularity and Acceptance as Distinct Dimensions of Social Standing for Chinese Children in Hong Kong

This study attempted to validate distinctions between popularity and social acceptance in the cultural context of Hong Kong. We recruited 280 Chinese children (132 girls, 148 boys, mean age = 9.5) from Hong Kong primary schools. These children completed a peer nomination inventory assessing popularity, social acceptance, social rejection, aggression, peer victimization, and social behavior. Consistent with research conducted in western samples, we found that social acceptance was correlated primarily with positive behavioral characteristics (i.e., assertiveness‐leadership and low levels of submissiveness‐withdrawal). In contrast, popularity was associated with a more mixed pattern of features including high levels of aggression. The overall pattern of findings closely replicates past research conducted in North American and European settings.     

Out of the Generosity of Your Heart: Are We Creating Active Citizens through Compulsory Volunteer Programmes for Young People in Australia?

Using governmentality as a theoretical framework, we examine two Australian policy areas where young people are disciplined into becoming good, active citizens. These policies—mutual obligation through the work for the dole programme, and school‐based active citizenship programmes similar to American service learning programmes—both mirror volunteer‐type activities, in a social context where volunteers are viewed as good citizens. In this study, we present findings from a qualitative study that addresses the question of whether young people will develop active citizenship through compulsory volunteer‐type programmes. The findings show that first, young people are very conscious of the lack of choice involved in these programmes and that this weakened their sense of agency. Second, the programmes failed to develop positive community attitudes and active social behaviours. These results suggest that policies that compel individuals to contribute to society may actually weaken their citizenship identities.     

Conjuncture and cultural reproduction in the process of embedding: social work practice in the context of government purchase of services in China

This paper focuses on the Chinese government’s policy of purchasing social services and discusses how relevant organisations provide social work and develop it within local socio-political and cultural contexts. An ethnographic research method was adopted for the study by the first author while participating in social work development in Q City. We argue that the policy of purchasing social services succeeded in achieving “embedded development” but also created a “conjuncture structure” in cultural reproduction. However, due toprofessional social workers in China have, in practice, passively responded to the conjuncture there has been a failure to reproduce professional values of social work in the Chinese cultural context. Therefore, further development of social work in China needs to strengthen cultural reflection in practical actions, focus on the exploration of cultural connections between social work practice and local communities, and enhance the cultural capacity of social workers in the local cultural context.     

有限机会的公平分配：中国农民子女市民化的水平与模式

本文将农民、农民工以及已经获得非农户籍的“新市民”的“农民子女”作为分析对象,以农民子女跨越城乡二元系统的市民化进程来透视中国社会系统的开放性与社会分层流动机制。基于CGSS调查数据等资料的分析表明,改革开放以来,中国农民的职业非农化水平快速提高,但身份市民化机会长期保持不变,两者之间的断裂日益扩大。这种断裂不仅表现在水平上,也表现在分配机制上。职业非农化的途径日益多元化,教育的作用相对弱化,家庭背景有着相对重要的作用。而户籍非农化（身份市民化）因升学之外的传统途径不断收缩,教育成为影响户籍非农化的主要因素,从而保持了有限的户籍非农化机会在农民子女间分配的公平性。     

Culture and context in Chinese field supervision: a case study from Shanghai

Supervision that provides supports helps students to develop intervention skills and forms a strong professional identity. Yet, the literature on supervision largely stems from Western countries. Less is known about supervisory relationships in countries such as China. This article presents a qualitative case study of three MSW students and two supervisors in Mainland China focusing on how the practice context and Chinese cultural norms intersect with student expectations over a 10-month period. Findings demonstrate important differences between student expectations for supervision and the reality of their experience. These differences are based in current realities but reinforced by cultural norms.     

Effects of US citizenship on wages of Asian immigrant women

The article presents a cross‐sectional study on the effects of US citizenship on wages of Asian immigrant women. The findings show that US citizenship positively moderated the relationship between sample characteristics and wages. Higher education (university and graduate school) significantly boosts the wage level of Asian immigrant women who have US citizenship. However, such positive influence does not exist for Asian immigrant women without US citizenship. This finding suggests that Asian immigrant women without US citizenship still face a glass ceiling. Key Practitioner Message: ● Educate immigrants about the importance of and potential benefits associated with citizenship.     

Full Responsibility with Partial Citizenship: Immigrant Wives in Taiwan

The interrelationship between increased ageing and declining fertility is facing many developed countries with challenges, risks and policy debates around care, reproduction and women's rights. This article demonstrates the special case of cross‐border marriages and the lives of immigrant wives in Taiwan, with a view to identifying their social needs and hence their prospects for social inclusion. It considers the extent to which these immigrant wives have managed to fulfil the dreams of their own native families and/or satisfy the reproductive demands of their ‘in‐law’ families. Issues of women's social and reproductive role, gender discrimination and the unfulfilled rights and ‘partial citizenship’ of immigrant wives are discussed. The author argues that immigrant wives carry full responsibility but possess only partial citizenship. The ideology of the spousal sponsorship regime, which makes the application for naturalization extremely difficult, not only increases the vulnerability of immigrant women but violates their human rights.     

Affective lexicons and indigenous responses: therapeutic interventions in social work practice with Chinese immigrant elders

This article discusses social work practice with a group of Chinese‐speaking immigrant elders in New York City who favour the use of traditional affective lexicons that communicate distress in oblique, metaphorical and somatic forms. It examines the therapeutic values of the social workers' indigenous responses, as shaped by their intuitive understanding of the latent emotional content of communication within the cultural context. The discussion affirms the importance of the emotional connection between worker and client, invariably shaped by language, cultural norms, and individual proclivity, as the universal substrate of cross‐cultural social work practice.

本文讨论关于针对一群移居纽约市但仍然喜欢以传统中文词汇， 隐喻等沟通的华语长者的社会工作实务。本文也探索了社会工作者的本土反应包括:通过理解语言背后的文化脉络， 从而认识当事人的潜在情绪等在治疗学上的价值。本文申明了社会工作者与当事人之间情感联系的重要性， 而这种联系往往是由跨文化社会工作底下的语言和文化规范等塑造而成的。     

Toward an inclusive system for informal workers? Diverging impacts of labor informality on Chinese workers’ pension enrollment

The Chinese pension reform of 2011 allowed informal workers to enroll either in the employment-based pension program or in the residency-based pension program. Despite this historic pension reform, the question of how labor informality influences one's pension participation under the reformed pension regime has been insufficiently discussed. This article fills this gap by analyzing two waves of a national-level survey—the China Labor Dynamic Survey of 2012 and 2014. This article makes the following two points. First, the impact of labor informality differs across the two pension programs. Second, local citizenship filters the negative impact of labor informality, but only for the residency-based pension program. Having “local” citizenship does not offset the negative impact of labor informality on workers’ enrollment in the employment-based pension program. These findings show how the recent reform is ironically reinforcing the existing social cleavages between different types of Chinese workers.     

How I am Constructing Culture‐inclusive Theories of Social‐psychological Process in our Age of Globalization

Accepting Cole's the premise that, “cultural‐inclusive psychology has been … an elusive goal” (1996, pp. 7–8) but one worth striving to attain, I first set out to identify my domain of interest and competence as an intellectual. Deciding it to be social interaction between individuals, I then searched out theoretical approaches to this domain that encompassed as many approaches to this trans‐historical concern that have emerged from cultural traditions bequeathing us their legacies. Doing this search comprehensively required me to move outside my Judeo‐Christian, Greco‐Roman, Renaissance heritage and its international diffusion via the European Empires since the 1500's, embodied most recently the American dominance of intellectual discourse since the Second World War. In my case, this journey has taken me in to Chinese culture and psychology where I have worked towards integrating the Chinese worldview and its psychological measures into the discipline of social psychology. Striving for a more inclusive culture‐view, I am now using multi‐cultural data bases to transcend this two‐cultural focus and incorporate wider measures of cultural variation into our theorizing and empirical validation of universal models for social interaction. This paper describes my current procedures for such culture‐mapping.     

从全球文化融合看中华文化的主体自觉

全球文化融合的时代语境使文化的主体自觉问题日益凸显。20世纪中国文化发展的经验教训告诉我们,不可偏离人类文化普遍价值提倡中国文化的特色、风格与气派。中华文化应基于全球化的历史背景,在清醒的文化反思的基础上,通过与西方进行对话交流的方式为人类提供具有普遍意义的价值资源,使自身成为人类普遍文化价值中的重要元素。     

National Identity,Citizenship and Immigration: Putting Identity in Context

In this paper we suggest that there is a need to examine what is meant by “context” in Social Psychology and present an example of how to place identity in its social and institutional context. Taking the case of British naturalisation, the process whereby migrants become citizens, we show that the identity of naturalised citizens is defined by common‐sense ideas about Britishness and by immigration policies. An analysis of policy documents on “earned citizenship” and interviews with naturalised citizens shows that the distinction between “elite” and “non‐elite” migrants is evident in both the “reified” sphere of policy and the “common sense” sphere of everyday identity construction. While social representations embedded in lay experience construct ethno‐cultural similarity and difference, immigration policies engage in an institutionalised positioning process by determining migrants' rights of mobility. These spheres of knowledge and practice are not disconnected as these two levels of “managing otherness” overlap—it is the poorer, less skilled migrants, originating outside the West who epitomise difference (within a consensual sphere) and have less freedom of mobility (within a reified sphere). We show that the context of identity should be understood as simultaneously psychological and political.     

时代语境中的雷锋精神价值

雷锋精神注重摄纳体现中华文化特质、顺应时代走势的思想理念、价值取向和道德规范等优良精神质素,在不断调整充实丰富完善中发扬光大,在时代前沿上竖起一座令人敬仰的思想道德丰碑。雷锋精神不仅契合人类文明的共性,而且体现了民族文化的特质;不仅彰显了中国特色社会主义的主流价值,而且顺应了当今社会大众文化的发展走势,成为中华民族传统美德与社会主义核心价值体系最完美的结合体,呈现出巨大的时代价值和当下意义,对于笃化理想、提升信念具有引领性功能,对于保持党的先进性和纯洁性具有导向性作用,对于建设社会主义核心价值体系具有统摄性效力。     

Collective citizenship: From citizenship and mental health to citizenship and solidarity

Although the concept of citizenship is a widely used theoretical framework within political philosophy, its use in the field of mental health remains underexplored. Within this context, citizenship emphasises the social inclusion and participation of people who are marginalized and offers a more social and relational view of services and support for people with mental health problems than has been common in mental health systems of care. At the same time, however, the citizenship approach has operated in the context of systems of care in the United States that favour highly individualized conceptions of, and approaches to, care, and these systems of care operate in the social and political context of highly individualized concepts of the citizen. In this article building on the work of other citizenship scholars, we argue that a collective form of citizenship, grounded in the 5Rs framework, holds the individual and collective in creative tension. Furthermore, the paper applies this model to the domain of mental health, where people are treated in individualistic ways and experience marginalisation, making the collective dimension imperative and promoting participation, empowerment and the contribution for social change to people with mental health problems. Our theoretical framework of collective citizenship, while geared toward the needs of persons with mental health problems, also contributes to recent citizenship theory on the inclusion of marginalized, stigmatised, and excluded groups. We illustrate the application of this approach through an ethnographic-participant observation case study of a collective citizenship group with which we are associated.