Universality and Acceptance Potential of Social Science Knowledge: Social Capital’s Transnational Diffusion in Chinese Sociology

• In Event: 479 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Methodology

Abstract

Since China began its reconstruction of sociology as an academic discipline in 1979, a number of Western sociological concepts have entered the field of Chinese sociology over the past several decades. The sociological concept of “social capital”, together with others, has become a popular construct in Chinese sociological writings. To assess how and why the concept of “social capital” has been “put to use” by Chinese sociologists, this paper examined 118 journal articles citing or discussing “social capital” by Chinese sociologists’ since 2000 and summarized the trajectory of its diffusion in Chinese sociology. Based on the primary data, this paper empirically documented that the early adopters of “social capital” among Chinese sociologists have privileged the network domain but marginalized the social trust and civic participation domain of social capital, while recent years witnessed a gradual embrace of the social trust and civic participation domains in Chinese sociologists’ writings. The trajectory of the cross-cultural diffusion of “social capital” in the Chinese sociology was discussed in terms of China’s institutional context of diffusing this concept.

Author

• Yuying Shen, Texas Tech University