Contemporary Chinese society

CONTEMPORARY CHINESE SOCIETY

Conceptual tools to understand social change in China and beyond

Key themes

• Change
• Society
• Institutions

Society

Describes both social life and units into which social life is organized.

Lives of all human beings are social and involve relationship to others.

At the same time, a person may be said to be member of one society and not another - ideas of boundedness, cultural distinctiveness (these ideas are at best relative).

Institutions

Deeply embedded patterns of social practices or norms that play a significant role in the organization of society.

Include diverse areas of social activity, from the family to basic aspects of political life.

In some cases have organized structure, becoming institutions in a something closer to the common usage of the term.

Institutions are about:

• Values (individual and internal level)
• Individual cognitive attitudes
• Individual emotions
• Relations (individuals, collective and external level)
• Social and political

interactions (human-human)- Ecological interactions (human-nature)

Norms (collective and internal level)

• Shared understandings
• Collective patterns of behaviour

Rules (collective and external level)

• Policies
• Laws and regulations

Modernity and modernization

Theories of modernity generally plot a shift from the traditional European societies of the Middle Ages to the political, cultural, and economic forms that characterize Western and, arguably, industrialized society more generally in the present day.

The dominant explanation of modernization in the 1950s and 1960s of how broad-based economic and social development occurs. Modernization theory explained development as the result of the systematic rationalization of a society's technology, social structure, and values. The development of a dynamic market-based economy was also accorded a large role in this process as a generator of wealth at the societal level and as a distributor of wealth across the society.

Modernization theory

Traditional society -> limited technology, static society.

Preconditions for take-off -> commercial exploitation of agriculture and extractive industry

Take-off -> development of a manufacturing sector

Drive to maturity -> development of wider industrial and commercial base

High mass consumption

Three dimensions of institution:

• Individual attitude
• Norms
• Rules (written)

The fourth dimension is the one of the relations, which is not about institution but is more about the relationship, society, community and the surrounding environment, both human and non-human.

Social institutions

The reason why this thing is so important in studies is because very often we tend to focus on many aspects of organizations and companies but just on technologies or micromanagement of employees etc, but there are so called soft aspects of the management of an organization, it refers to what is called the mission of the company and now there are more attention on this aspect.

Regulative,

normative and cognitive elements associated with organizational change. These three things have different aspects. Look at the first, the dimension of rules. There are different criteria for understanding this dimension:

• Legitimacy and authorities: legal system, legal instruments
• Central rudiments: policies and rules
• System change drivers: legal obligation
• System change sustainers: fear and coercion
• Behavioral reasoning: have to

It is based on the legal system, legal instruments, which can be translated into policies, actual policy, and rules. This dimension, when you want to push for changes in an institution, is based on the idea of the legal obligation as well as coercion, the fear in the way to be punished if you don't follow the rules. So it is about what you have to do.

Norms:

• Legitimacy: moral and ethical systems
• Central rudiments: work roles, habits, and norms
• System change drivers: moral obligations
• System change sustainers: duty and responsibility
• Behavioral reasoning: ought to

Norms are

very different from rules, it’s more about a moral obligation. Very often morality isdifferent from rules. Is mostly about duty, be responsible and responsive to a stimulus.

Cognitive- Legitimacy: cultural systems- Central rudiments: values, beliefs and assumptions- System change drivers: change values are internalized- System change sustainers: social identity and personal desire- Behavioral reasoning: want to

Is more about culture and identity, the aspiration of individuals as well as their desire and the waypeople imagine themselves in the future. This can be the deepest level of change both inindividual as well as in society. 2 di 73

Stages of institutional change

Institutionalization is another way to talk about change of those three dimensions.

1. Precipitating jolts
   • Social
   • Technological
   • Regulatory
2. Deinstitutionalization
3. Pre-institutionalization
4. Theorization
5. Diffusion
6. Re-institutionalization

Doesn’t matter the different stages, but what is important

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is to understand this process wherethere is a first event that can be define as a critical event about social situation, environmentsituation and technological development which figure something better.So the two stages after this are the two stages in which there are two things, on one hand wehave the former previous institution which are criticize, where there are people who are trying tofind new words to substitute those, on the other hand we have social actors (individuals,organizations) who try to find a new way. Very often these stages are about practical solutions.Then we have the stage call theorization, it’s about the cognitive dimensions, the way we seethings and understand these.Then the re-institutionalization, means new solutions.Exogenous institutional changeCritical events accelerate change. Very often, according to many models, these critical eventshappen from somewhere outside of the system, for example aqua Granda in Venice, a storm, anearthquake, also