Two professors of the Faculty of History published academic papers in the first two issues of Social Sciences in China in 2020.
In No. 1 issue of Social Sciences in China, Professor Wang Yuesheng published a long paper entitled “The Lineal Family: An Analysis of the Contemporary Family Form and Intergenerational Relationship”, which examines the new trend in the family form of contemporary China by leveraging the methods of the sciences of population, sociology and history. The paper is of high theoretic implications and value for looking at the changes in China’s urban families and the policy adjustment.
In No. 2 issue of Social Sciences in China, Professor Li Jinzheng published a paper entitled “’Mutual Generation and Mutual Restraint’: Fei Xiaotong’s Theory of Urban-Rural Relationship in the 1930s and 1940s ”. According to the author, the 1930s and 1940s is a period during which the relationship between urban and rural areas became a issue of high concern among people from all walks of life in China. Fei Xiaotong, a renowned Chinese sociologist paid attention to and studied this issue and creatively applied the concept of Traditional Chinese medicine “mutual generation and mutual restraint” in the study of China’s urban and rural relationship, believing that the tension between mutual generation and mutual restraint had affected and determined the historical evolution of the urban-rural relationship in China. Professor Li Jinzheng maintains that although the countryside was to some extent ruled and exploited by the cities, the traditional urban-rural relationship was more one of “mutual generation” featuring “balanced exchanges” and “organic adjustment”. The key to mutual generation lay in the role of farming households’ handicraft making, which represented an “integration of agriculture and industries”. However, since the beginning of modern times, the urban-rural relationship in China has changed from one of “mutual generation” to that of “mutual restraint”, i.e., separation and opposition. In other words, the cities and towns have increased their extraction from the countryside and drained the rural areas of the rural intellectual elite, hereby dealing a devastating blow to rural handicraft industry and impoverishing rural dwellers. In order to solve the problem of urban-rural “mutual restraint” and transform the relationship to that of “mutual generation”, we should focus on social and economic development in the rural areas, especially the recovery and development of rural industry, which should be mechanized and supported by wide establishment of industrial cooperatives.
(Translated by Juguo Zhang)
