Cheris Shun-ching Chan

Invigorating the Content in Social Embeddedness: An Ethnography of Life Insurance Transactions in China

Based on more than 14 months’ ethnographic research in China, this article brings in culture and symbolic interactionism to understand the social embeddedness of economic transactions. First, an analytic frame linking tie strengths to defining principles, relational properties, and interactions is constructed and applied to changes in life insurance transactions in China. The data suggest that strong tie transactions were common until the economic gains of the sellers were made public. The author argues that the ethical‐affective principle that defines strong ties and the high intensity of trust, affection, and asymmetric obligation that constitute these ties make them a double‐edged sword for economic transactions. Instead, ties with midrange or weak strength are more effective because of their relational complementarity (although direct economic exchanges may take place among strong ties under extreme institutional or contingency conditions). The author also reveals that dramaturgical interactions, through which economic actors exercise their agency, are an integral part of embedded transactions.

The Falun Gong in China: A Sociological Perspective

This article offers a sociological perspective on the rise of and crackdown on the falun gong in relation to the social, cultural and political context of China. I specify from a sociological perspective that the falun gong is categorically not a sect but a cult-like new religious movement. Its popularity, I suggest, is related to the unresolved secular problems, normative breakdown and ideological vacuum in China in the 1980s and 1990s. Before the crackdown, the falun gong represented a successful new religious movement, from a Euro-American perspective. However, most of its strengths as a movement have become adversarial to its survival in the specific historical and political condition of China.

Doing ideology amid a crisis: collective actions and discourses of the Chinese Falun Gong Movement

Based on an interactionist framework, this article examines how followers of a contemporary Chinese religious movement, Falun Gong, deal with a crisis situation and sustain their conviction in the absence of their charismatic leader. Data were collected during a yearlong ethnography of the Falun Gong in Chicago and Hong Kong. The findings reveal that followers experienced cognitive dissonance as a result of the Chinese authorities’ suppression and their leader’s disappearance. To cope with the external and internal threats, they engaged in frequent collective actions and discourses. These collective exercises allowed them to act out their shared ideology, reaffirm their ideological mentality, and activate their ideological passion. Through interaction and collective interpretation, followers not only reconstructed meanings out of the confusion, they also romanticized the charisma of their missing leader. This article asserts the critical role of doing ideology in sustaining a movement and integrates an interactionist, social psychological approach into the literature of social movements.

Patient–physician trust in China: a workshop summary

BACKGROUND Patient-physician mistrust has become deeply embedded in medical clinics within a wide variety of settings, including many in China. The purpose of this research was to develop a series of actionable policy recommendations to rebuild patient-physician trust in China. METHODS Our interdisciplinary group included experts in medicine, public health, philosophy, ethics, law, regulation, China studies, anthropology, sociology, and communications. Recommendations were identified by team members and presented at a two-day workshop at the Harvard Center, Shanghai, China. The group divided into three teams (medical education, ethics and law, and healthcare systems) in order to revise and finalise the recommendations. FINDINGS We identified a total of 18 recommendations focused on medical schools, ethical guidance, legal systems, and health systems to rebuild patient-physician trust. Medical education recommendations included a requirement for medical humanities as a core component, promotion of experiential learning and community-medical school partnerships, and improvement of evaluation of medical humanities education. Ethical and legal recommendations included encouragement of more transparency in doctor practices and the healthcare system, creating laws to promote mandatory medical error reporting, and acceleration of the development of neutral procedures for recording and resolving medical disputes. Healthcare systems recommendations included promoting healthcare systems that facilitate and acknowledge caregiving, transitioning from red packets (gifts to physicians) and towards higher physician salaries, strengthening primary healthcare systems, and establishment of non-punitive systems for error reporting in hospitals. INTERPRETATION Several educational, legal, ethical, and healthcare system reforms to rebuild patient-physician trust are feasible. Our recommendations go beyond the healthcare sector alone, suggesting that policy responses within education, legal, and ethical norms are also critical. The presence of mistrust should not be misconstrued as an errant medical system, but rather as an opportunity and a responsibility to rebuild patient-physician trust. Our recommendations are relevant within the Chinese context and in other transitioning healthcare systems. FUNDING Harvard China Fund and the China Medical Board.

Divorcing localization from the divergence paradigm: Localization of Chinese life insurance practice and its implications

This article challenges conventional assumptions associating localization with cultural divergence. Based on ethnographic research of the life insurance business in China, it explores how localization may intertwine with homogenization, and why it may not subvert cultural hegemony. The data illustrate how transnational life insurers disseminated new practices and new ideas to the Chinese population; how they localized their practices according to local conditions; and how the newly emerged domestic insurers imitated and deviated from the organizational practices of the transnational firms. Borrowing insights from institutional theories, the article analyses why an initial divergence of product lines and marketing strategies between transnational and domestic life insurers soon disappeared, and why homogenizing dynamics took place. The article argues that localization is by no means a guarantee, nor an indicator, of divergence, and the so-called ‘two-way street’ of cultural flows between the global and the local are far from balanced. Le présent article vise à interroger le lien habituellement établi entre la localisation et la divergence culturelle. Basé sur une enquête ethnographique auprès d’entreprises d’assurance vie en Chine, il explore la manière dont la localisation et l’homogénéisation culturelle s’articulent, de manière à expliquer pourquoi la localisation ne correspond pas nécessairement à une subversion de l’hégémonie culturelle. Les données permettent de voir comment les entreprises internationales d’assurance vie ont disséminé de nouvelles idées auprès de la population chinoise ; comment elles ont localisé leurs agences en fonction des conditions locales et comment les entreprises nationales ont simultanément imité et détourné les pratiques organisationnelles des entreprises transnationales. A l’appui des théories institutionnalistes, l’article analyse la disparition progressive d’une divergence initiale en matière de produits et de stratégies de marketing entre les entreprises nationales et transnationales, en expliquant la raison de ces dynamiques d’homogénéisation. Il s’agit de montrer que la localisation ne garantie pas la divergence et ne peut nullement en constituer un indicateur fiable. La soi-disant « route à double flux » des circulations culturelles entre le niveau global et le niveau local n’est nullement fréquentée de manière équilibrée dans les deux sens. Este artículo analiza la relación entre el comportamiento ambiental de un individuo y su contexto social. Tomando como punto de partida la literatura sobre movimientos sociales y sociedad global, se parte del supuesto de que el medio ambiente tiene a la vez una dimensión nacional y global. Usamos la encuesta del ISSP de 2000-2001 sobre medio ambiente para testar nuestras hipótesis y distinguimos dos tipos de comportamiento: públicos y privados. Los comportamientos públicos incluyen acciones como participar en manifestaciones. Los comportamientos privados consisten en actividades como la separación de basuras. A nivel contextual consideramos los vínculos con la sociedad mundial, la estructura nacional de las oportunidades políticas y los recursos. Un modelo de regresión jerárquica que incluye 23 países y alrededor de 24.000 entrevistados muestra que los comportamientos públicos son bastante similares entre países, mientras que los comportamientos privados están más influidos por los contextos locales. Por lo que se refiere a los factores contextuales, la estructura de las oportunidades políticas tiene el mayor impacto tanto sobre los comportamientos públicos como sobre los comportamientos privados. Los factores de la sociedad global también ofrecen explicaciones adicionales.