"The fabric of sociological knowledge"

 To the best of our knowledge, international comparisons of paradigms and theoretical methodologies have not to date produced any investigations into sociological knowledge and sociologists’ research practices in France and in China. While comparative research is scarcely new, the question of the processes leading to the production of sociological knowledge and cultural variations in research practices between China and Europe is absolutely new. This approach will enable us to identify the points at which sociologies constructed in the West and those produced in China meet, overlap and cross-fertilise each other. A cross-cultural perspective approach to the ways in which paradigms and theoretical methodologies are put into practice in France and China taking as a starting point clearly defined research situations, would lead to the production of new sociological knowledge on both sides. The aim of this conference is to contribute to analysis of the ways in which academic knowledge is produced and deployed over time.

Drawing on French and Chinese experiences, we will analyse how a post-Western space has come into being in which sociological knowledge is emerging that is both specific and shared and in which theoretical methodologies are gathered together on the basis of very different histories and traditions. We will examine how research practices and sociological knowledge are constructed by analysing the different forms of field experience in sociology. Our aim will be to capture cultural variations in interpretative flexibility and their effects on the implementation of theoretical methodologies. To pose the question of cultural variations in interpretative flexibility in the production of sociological knowledge in France and in China means examining those forms of knowledge that appear to be specific, those that seem to be the product of reappropriation, reinterpretation, borrowing and hybridisation and those that seem to be have been produced in areas of non-translatability, that is in spaces in which research practices and sociological knowledge in France and in China do not correspond with each other.

This International Conference will be included in the LIA’s Program and attempts to bring together very different French and Chinese experiences and to carry out a simultaneous and comparative analysis in actuality of sociological practices in order to identify methodological innovations and creations.

(Texts here)

Programm

(Program here)

Friday October the 17

9h : Introduction

Professor Li Peilin, Vice-President of Chinese Academy of Social sciences and Co-Director of the LIA
Professor Xie Lizhong, Chairman of the Sociology Department, Beijing University
Professor Laurence Roulleau-Berger, Research Director at CNRS and Co- Director of the LIA, ENS Lyon, Triangle

Session 1 : How to categorize and to measure ? 
Discussants : Professor Liu Aiyu, Deputee Director of Sociology Department, Beijing University, Professor Qiu Zeqi, Sociology Department, Beijing University and Professor Michel Kokoreff, University Paris 8, Deputee Director of CRESPPA

• 9h30 : Professor Li Peilin, Vice-President of Chinese Academy of Social sciences : China’s Inequality and the New Stage of Development
• 9h50 : Professor Chen Guangjin, Director of Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social sciences : How to measure structural changes in China ?
• 10h10 : Professor Ahmed Boubeker, University of Saint-Etienne, Centre Max Weber : What is Ethnicity ?
• 10h30 : Associate Professor Bruno Cousin, Lille 1 University, Clersé : Method approaches in the study of urban segregation : the cases of the upper-middle-class refounded neighborhoods of Paris and Milan

• 10h45 : Professor Li Chunling, Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social sciences : How to define and measure middle class in today’s China
• 11h05 : Associate Professor Djaouida Séhili, Lyon 2 University, IUTL, Centre Max Weber : Job evaluation, Gender and Discrimination
• 11h25-12h30 : Discussion and synthesis1

Session 2 : Post-Western Space and societies’ narratives
Discussants : Professor Zhou Xiaohong, Dean of the School of Social and Behavior Sciences, Nanjing University, Professor Tong Xin Sociology Department, Beijing University andProfessor Ahmed Boubeker, University of Saint-Etienne, Centre Max Weber

• 14h : Professor Laurence Roulleau-Berger, Research Director at CNRS, ENS Lyon, Triangle : Post-Western Space and sociology of recognition
• 14h20 : Professor Sun Feiyu, Department of sociology, Beijing University : Life World and methodology
• 14h40 : Professor Luo Jar-der, Department of Sociology, Tsinghua University : Social Network analysis : theoretical and methodological approach
• 15h-15h55 : Professor Michel Kokoreff, University Paris 8, Deputee Director of CRESPPA : Drugs, trafficking and dealers’s careers

• 15h35 : Professor Emeritus Numa Murard, University Paris 7 : Narrative sociology : unemployment and poor workers in France
• 15h55 : Professor Liu Yuzhao, Deputee Director School of Sociology and Political Science, Shanghai University : Industrialization models in early times and the social assimilation of floating populations in the cities : Comparing studies between Yangzi Delta and Zhujiang Delta
• 16h15 : Samuel Lézé, Associate Professor and Deputee Director of the Human Sciences Department, ENS Lyon, Triangle : Emotions and Life narratives
• 16h35 : Discussion and synthesis 2
• 17h30 : Conclusion 1 : common spaces and singular spaces in the fabric of sociological knowledge in France and in China by Professor Xie Lizhong

Saturday October the 18th

Session 3 : Cosmopoliteanism methodology and global knowledge
Discussants : Professor Zhu Xiaoyang, Deputy Head, Sociology Department, Beijing University and Samuel Lézé, Associate Professor and Deputee Director of the Human Sciences Department, ENS Lyon, Triangle

• 9h : Associate Professor He Rong, Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social sciences : Paradigms and Paradoxes : reflections on the methodological knowledge about Chinese religion
• 9h20 : Professor Liu Neng, Department of sociology, Beijing University : "Returning Back to Space-based Qualitative Sociology : On Inheriting Prof. Fei Hsiao-Tung’s Academic Heritage".
• 9h40 : Associate Professor Adelina Miranda, HDR, Naples University, LAVUE, Paris : Circulations, mobilities and migrants’s networks in the Mediterranean

• 10h15 : Professor Agnes Deboulet, Department of Sociology, University Paris 8, LAVUE : Comparative perspective : citizenship in international cities
• 10h35 : Professor Fan Ke, Director of the department of Anthropology, Nanjing University : Globalization and anthropological methods
• 10h55 : Loïs Bastide, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Sociology, University of Geneva : Postcolonialism and multi-sited ethnography
• 11h15 : Han Sang Jin, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, Seoul National University : The significance of Foucaulian discursive analysis in East Asia
• 11h 35-12h15 : Discussion and synthesis 2
• 12h15 : General conclusion by Professor Li Peilin and Professor Laurence Roulleau-Berger

• 14h30-17h30 : Doctoral Session with Chinese and French Ph.D. Students in Beida