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This article is from WeChat official account:Yanjing Book Review (ID: Pekingbooks), author: Zhangxiao Chen, from the title figure: AFP

Yan Fei believes that sociology is a subject that cares about order and human nature, and this is the ultimate goal of sociological research. Yan Fei believes that “involution” is the inevitable result of the structural changes in Chinese society, and when “involution” cannot be avoided, the people try to use “Versailles literature” to deconstruct the reality that cannot be changed.

In Yan Fei’s mouth, in the current rapid change, too many things happen every day, some of which become news and stories and are briefly noticed, and most of them disappear with the wind. Some of these “stories” entered Yan Fei’s classroom, and some were put into “Penetration”—foreigners seeking medical treatment in Hangzhou, changing historical textbooks, and education of children of migrants in Beijing all became his research Object.

The following is a dialogue between Yanjing Book Review and Yan Fei.

“Penetration: Like SocietyThink Like a Scientist”, Yan Fei

Idealland丨Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore November 2020 Edition

“The ultimate goal of sociology is human nature and social order”

Yanjing Book Review: Is “the construction of order” the dominant logic of “Penetration”? Why choose it?

Yan Fei: The academic circles actually have different ways and dimensions to understand the research objects of sociology. Many people divide the research objects of sociology, including macro, mid-range and micro research perspectives or research objects. The macro perspective is to look at the overall social changes. The mid-range perspective focuses more on communities and communities, while the micro perspective focuses on individuals, which is more biased towards social psychology in terms of path.

According to research methods, sociology can be divided into quantitative research and qualitative research. The former uses quantitative data analysis to focus on the causal relationships and associations behind social phenomena; the latter uses qualitative research methods and paths to dig out the stories behind each individual. Specific paths include fields, interviews, oral history, and social memory.

In my opinion, no matter who the research object is and what method is used, all sociological research ultimately falls on the core issue of human nature and social order. No matter what kind of social changes occur, including changes in the social system, the division and aggregation of communities, as well as the individual level of love, hatred, sadness, desire, and joy, Sociology in the final analysis cares about each The dilemmas faced by individuals within the system of the times, their struggles in the present and their expectations for the future, as well as the interaction between people; Sociology also cares about how each individual responds to the times Changes, how they make choices, how these responses and choices profoundly affect the destiny of each individual, the destiny of the family, and the life course of future generations.

Yanjing Book Review: Why is that the latter? Why is it more partial to social order?

Yan Fei: I don’t think “Penetration” is more orderly. Behind the reality that this book cares about is that with the reform and opening up in China, the social order has undergone drastic changes, and there have even been social failures in some areas.Fan phenomenon. Under this background, each individual’s response to the changes of the times can actually see the goodness and gloom of human nature, and at the institutional level, how we should regulate the gloom of human nature and let the goodness of nature carry forward.

Yanjing Book Review: The order you are concerned about is more the order at the system level, or the order formed spontaneously between people?

Yan Fei: Order should not be one-sidedly understood as a grand order at the institutional level, or a micro-order between people. In different issues, order has different aspects. For example, during the skyline cleanup campaign, the government issued a decree to remove the signboards to restore the city’s true colors, but it didn’t take long to suddenly suspend this policy to transfer the convenience of the city to the people. In this issue, the view of order at the level of power has been deviated, from a view of order based on the will of the patriarch or the will of the chief executive to the view of order from the perspective of ordinary people or civilians.

In addition to the view of order of power, there is also a view of order in a micro context. This concept of order focuses on how the people living in it make their own micro-understandings and interactions with this event, how to use their actions to express their responses to this distorted concept of order, and how a brand-new concept of order works Which generates. For example, some local governments require small shops not to open the front door, but some bosses turn the windows facing the road into doors, and customers can enter the shop directly from the windows, or open a passage from the back to bypass one. The institutional view of order re-establishes a new and more convenient view of order, or it can be said to be a “hidden script”.

Therefore, when we understand order, we cannot only focus on the order at the power level, nor can we only pay attention to the order in the micro-scene; we must take both into account to have a clearer picture of order.

“If there is only shallow knowledge, there will be no way to talk about’layers of tired'”

Yanjing Book Review: The book “Penetration” is adapted from an audio course. What did you do in the process of writing the text into the book?

Yan Fei: This book is indeed adapted from lectures, but when I wrote these articles, my inner thought was that I wanted to write a book. Therefore, I conceived in accordance with the framework of a book, wrote in accordance with the posture of the book, and then revised and polished it in the form of a lecture, turning it into a colloquial expression.

In the process of writing the book this time, the editor and I went back to the original text to continue deep refinement to increase the depth of the theory and the citation of the literature to increase its degree of specialization and refinement. In the course, I followed the order of sociologists, but in the book I started anew and reconstructed the original content with new logic. I originally wanted to take the name of this book as “order”, but felt that it was not very attractive or penetrating, so I finally named the book “penetrating”.

Yanjing Book Review: There is a section in the book, including in your course there is also a lecture on the reflection of knowledge payment. Why do you arrange such a section? Is this content also the reflection of sociology?

Yan Fei: In my opinion, there are three main characteristics of knowledge payment: first, knowledge payment should simplify complex knowledge; second, in the presentation The key knowledge points are repeated continuously, repeated in the same subsection, and the same thing should be done for the knowledge points that appeared in the previous subsections in subsequent chapters; the third point is to use colloquial expression.

According to my observations, some paid-for-knowledge products currently on the market try to finish Norberts Elias in 12 minutes, or finish Weber in 20 minutes. I think what payment for knowledge is trying to accomplish is the transfer of shallow knowledge. This is a good thing first. At least users have the knowledge and context, and the willingness to learn is good after all. For the general audience, they will feel that they have gained basic knowledge through learning this lesson.

However, I have a deep-seated worry. For young people who really want to be academics, wanting to become a scholar in this way is a very dangerous signal. This means that you are not willing to truly invest in the process of learning and accumulating knowledge.

I particularly like the term “layered” mentioned by the historian Gu Jiegang in “Ancient History Discrimination”. Knowledge is also a process of accumulation; in this process, one can learn by analogy, associate, compare, and Bring in. But when we have been acquiring shallow knowledge, it is difficult to achieve such an effect.

Yanjing Book Review: From the perspective of the sociology of knowledge, is the payment of knowledge a downward shift of knowledge power, from the hands of academic intellectuals to the hands of capital or the people?

Yan Fei: I think there is such a trend and tendency. First of all, intellectuals are relatively difficult in the current economic income, and at the same time they have noThere are channels for generating vocalizations, but research that represents the academic interests of intellectuals is not taken seriously, and a large number of mainstream researches with the nature of expressing opinions have to be carried out.

When capital finds intellectuals, they find that they can realize their knowledge with the power of the market, which is equivalent to providing intellectuals with new channels, allowing them to gain a sense of existence and experience. In exchange, intellectuals need to obey the dimensions of the market and capital, and accept the standards they identify: certain topics and knowledge can be talked about, and they can be rewarded in a short time.

On the other hand, for intellectuals, one of their duties is to teach and disseminate elite knowledge to the public in easy-to-understand language. This requires skill, not everyone can do it, and not all intellectuals are willing to do it.

As the spokesperson of knowledge, intellectuals will develop a sense of superiority over knowledge over time in the college. Intellectuals will think that knowledge itself is elitist, distanced from the masses, and naturally resists dialogue with the masses. At present, the group of intellectuals who were more active in dialogue with the public have been stigmatized as “public knowledge”, so they are less willing to express to the public.

If more intellectuals are willing to use easy-to-understand language to impart and disseminate knowledge that belongs to the elite, this is a particularly good phenomenon. However, in the process of teaching, some intellectuals chose to “conspiracy” with capital and use capital to complete a turn. This is relatively regrettable.

Yan Fei in class Picture source: Provided by the respondent

“Sociology needs to tell the ‘story’ first”

Yanjing Book Review: Some critics think that “Penetration” is relatively “shallow”. What’s your response?

Yan Fei: If you compare “Penetration” with a professional discussion of sociological theories, it is shallow. Because I didn’t fully return to the original text, I checked, analyzed and analyzed every article of every scholar, but selected some important points to extend and expand. If compared with the analysis of the original texts verbatim, it is indeed shallow.

On the other hand, the biggest feature of “Penetration” is the grafting of classical theory with Chinese social reality. In the process of grafting, you can think about whether these past theories still have explanatory power today.

Yanjing Book Review: In the process of writing “Penetration”, did you first find the real problems in China and then look for theoretical explanations, or should you look for cases based on theory?

Yan Fei: Neither of these two logics. I have been teaching “History of Western Sociological Thought” at Tsinghua University for five years. During this period, the theory has always been there, but the actual cases have emerged by themselves. Some things that happen in reality have become social hotspots, and some have been submerged in the lives of modern people, becoming a small story, and then disappearing. But I will read these stories, combine these cases with sociological theory, and share them with students in class.

Yanjing Book Review: In your opinion, is there an insurmountable gap between theory and reality, and how to establish a connection between the two? Is this establishment dangerous?

Yan Fei: Different teachers have different tendencies. First, I will let the students tell the story first. If you want to tell a story well, you must first persuade people with reasoning. To explain the reasoning clearly, you need a lot of data to support it. Second, there must be affection, a story, and a touch of affection. To do this, the researcher needs to go to the field to truly feel the “love and hatred” of the interviewee. When we achieve these two points, some theories will gradually emerge, linking or grafting with reality.

But in the process of grafting, I have always emphasized that you must not just think about grand theories. For example, a researcher in the sociology of consumption will immediately think of Tosdan Veblen’s “Theory of the Leisure Class”; as long as they do social movements, the theory is a “rabbit crowd”; as long as they do social stratification , Is Bourdieu’s “division”. At this time, I would ask students if they know there is a theory called reflection theory, which has been translatedIt is called “reflection theory”. This theory means that our daily cultural events and life behaviors are actually affected by the grand political environment to a certain extent. It is a reflection or reflection of it.

The simplest example is that in the 1950s and 1960s, everyone took the names “Jianguo” and “Cultural Revolution.” And the name we choose today may be “Olympics”, “Revival”, or some more peaceful words, or idol dramas and popular literature from Taiwan. Behind the name is actually the grand political environment of each era, its reflection and reaction. “Reflection theory” is actually a very small microscopic theory, or a middle-level theory. These small theories actually require more dialogue between researchers, rather than directly connecting with grand theories. Grand theories do not have sufficient explanatory power on some issues.

Sociology of education has become a branch and field of sociology that has attracted the attention of Chinese people in recent years. Picture source: AFP

“The essence of’volume’ is a competitive orientation brought about by the social structure”

Yanjing Book Review: In the past few years, anthropology has caused a lot of discussion at the public level, but sociology seems to be absent. What do you think of this problem?

Yan Fei: First of all, anthropology is “out of the circle” is a particularly good thing, which allows the public to see how scholars work and how to conduct a very rigorous academic Research, but this does not mean that sociology has not received attention.

In recent years, an area that has received more social attention is the sociology of education. “Our Children”, “Excellent Sheep”, “Privilege”, “Born”, “Diploma Society”, these books are all concerned Within the scope of sociology, including educational inequality and stratification of education, it directly faces the education anxiety of the middle class.

Yanjing Book Review: From a sociological perspective, is “involution” a self-mockery or self-awakening?

Yan Fei: From the perspective of sociology, it is the social structure that makes people in it have to “roll”. The essence of “volume” is the competitive orientation brought about by the social structure. We need to look back at the “involute” in the context of social change. The middle class has been increasing in the past 20 years. From a sociological point of view, our population structure has changed from “inverted T-shaped” to “earth-shaped”. After the data of the seventh census in 2020 are released, I predict that the horizontal line above the word “tu” will be longer, which means that the current “middle class” in Chinese society is still increasing.

One of the problems facing the middle class is how they can continue their “middle class status” so that their children can also become the middle class, and even further become “upper class”, and then become the elite of society Class. Education has become an important track. Whether it is active or passive, they will constantly ask their children to participate in cram school to improve their grades, and look forward to them entering a good university. After entering the university, the grade point becomes the only measurement indicator, and continues to be chased by KPI after work.

In elite universities, students will think that the postgraduate entrance examination is a particularly shameful thing, and they will choose to exempt them or go abroad directly. If a student enters the postgraduate school, other students will look at him strangely, and I will feel embarrassed. In order to avoid this embarrassment, students will continue to work hard to achieve the goal of “no postgraduate entrance examination” from the moment they enter the university, and complete the quantitative standards inside and outside the academic industry.

Yanjing Book Review: Compared with other social sciences, is sociology “combat”? Is the ultimate goal hope to change the social structure?

Yan Fei: The ultimate goal of sociology is to be a rational and free person. Because only everyone becomes a person with substantial rationality, their independent rationality will have a structural impact on the society they live in, on history and their own destiny.

Yanjing Book Review: You had a conversation with Wang Xiaochuan before. Do you think sociology has enough imagination compared with computer science?

Yan Fei: I don’t look at this question like this. The conversation with Ogawa was very happy and opened a channel of heterogeneous connections. I was also inspired a lot. Through this conversation, I sendNow, Wang Xiaochuan has actually read a lot of sociology books. He studied Fei Xiaotong in his freshman year. The current emphasis on the intersection of different disciplines, sociology can of course be closely integrated with biology, computer science, architecture, and physics to conduct cross-disciplinary research.

Communicating with scholars in other disciplines has inspired me a lot. I can see aspects that I would not see before. For scholars, they have been confined to their own academic circles for a long time. If things go on like this, they will become slack and tired of knowledge and form their own circles. It is difficult for academics in the circle to see the outside world. But once you get out of this circle and make heterogeneous connections, knowledge will “accumulate” again.

Yan Fei and Wang Xiaochuan, Jin Jun, Zhang Jie participated in the “Sociological Imagination from the Perspective of New Liberal Arts” dialogue. Picture source: Internet

Yanjing Book Review: Outside of dialogue with the public, what is the context of your professional academic writing?

Yan Fei: My professional writing has two main dimensions. One dimension is the hope of using big data to interpret contemporary Chinese society. I will publish an English monograph next year, which is a collection of all the papers on big data interpretation of Chinese social phenomena that I have done in the past six years. Using big data, we can pay attention to the development of society over a long period of time.

Another part of the research is closely linked to social memory and field research, using qualitative research methods to focus on marginalized people and disadvantaged groups in society. I hope to use this method to focus on describing the impact of changes in urban fabric on their individual lives in the contemporary era, especially in the last five years.

Yanjing Book Review: Historical sociology is one of your areas of focus. In Mills’ “Sociological Imagination”, it is also proposed that the historical dimension should be one of the ways to broaden the sociological imagination What do you think of the historical aspect in sociological research?

Yan Fei: When scholars discuss research methods, most of them focus on the quantitative and qualitative aspects. I think we should increase the historical dimension. In the words of Mills, sociology needs historical imagination. If you include the historical dimension when analyzing many things, the context will become very clear.

In the past five years, historical sociology has made a big development. The historical perspective is the origin of society, not just a branch of sociology. Events that have occurred in history, and the social mechanisms and mechanisms behind them, are constantly being staged and repeated today. China is currently undergoing dramatic social changes, and the trend remains unchanged. When we return to history, we can see the long-term development of Chinese society.

For example, in the French Revolution, historians are dedicated to presenting historical events, their time, place, and characters. But sociologists may jump out and see that there are different temporalities in the analytical framework. For the same thing, we can adopt a structural perspective, a historical teleological perspective, an experimental perspective, and a sociological perspective of narrative events. In the analysis of different theories, the charm of sociology is reflected in it.

Yanjing Book Review: Did big data give birth to your research interest, or did this technology enable your research interest to be realized?

Yan Fei: It should be the second one. My research interests and problem awareness have not changed, but the use of big data can help researchers to mine and discuss data over a long period of time. During the epidemic, I just published a paper, this paper discusses whether the “Werther effect” really exists. The “Werther effect” is a plot in Goethe’s novel “The Troubles of Young Werther”. Werther finally shot himself because of unemployment and broken love. After reading the relevant plot, will young readers follow the protagonist’s way to end their lives? Will suicide be contagious among the crowd?

In response to this question, I did an empirical study using US data. We collected all the depictions of suicide in all books in the 20th century in the United States, and then performed cluster analysis, and then established a correlation model with other variables. We are trying to figure out whether the depiction of suicide plots in books will affect people’s suicidal behavior in reality after controlling for other variables.

Yanjing Book Review: Can you tell me how you did the two researches on the medical conditions of foreigners in Hangzhou and the floating population in Beijing?

Yan Fei:First of all, I tell the story first, and then talk to the theory. The medical status and social stratification of foreigners in Hangzhou are closely related to inequality. This study focuses on the impact of social stratification on health and self-evaluated health. I tried to talk directly to the theory. According to some theories, the richer the healthier the body, and there is another theory that the healthier the body, the more opportunities for upward mobility. This study hopes to explore which theory is more suitable for reality?

The research on the education of children of migrants in Beijing is actually the “political disharmony theory” in the (policy matrix) “Relative words. Regarding the education of migrant children, the central government has always emphasized that public schools should give them equal educational opportunities. However, the development and reform commissions and urban and rural planning departments of various cities hope to develop cities while reducing their population.

When the policy is implemented, the bargaining power of the local government education department is lower than the bargaining power of the economic development planning department. When these two policies were implemented at the same time, there was disharmony or conflict. Under the conflict, educational equity was sacrificed and could not be implemented, which eventually caused the educational difficulties of the children of migrants.

This article is from WeChat official account:Yanjing Book Review (ID: Pekingbooks), author: Zhangxiao Chen