Glossy television images of happy, industrious, and increasingly prosperous workers show a bright view of life in twenty-first-century China. But behind the officially approved story is a different reality, Gerard Lemos reveals in this extensively researched book. Lemos conducted hundreds of interviews with Chinese men and women in non-westernized areas distant from such cities as Beijing and Shanghai. He reports that the lives his subjects describe belie the myth of a harmonious, cohesive Chinese society. Much as the government promotes such a positive image, everyday people in China are beleaguered by immense social and community problems as well as personal, family, and financial anxieties. Lemos investigates a China beyond the tourist trail. He offers a revealing account of the thoughts and feelings of Chinese people regarding all facets of their lives, from education to health care, unemployment to old age, politics to wealth. Taken together, the stories of these men and women bring to light a broken society, one whose people are frustrated, angry, sad, and often fearful about the circumstances of their lives. The author considers the implications of these findings and analyzes how China's community and social problems threaten the ambitious nation's hopes for a cohesive future.

《政治社会学》力图吸收各国政治社会学的优秀研究成果，并根据中国社会的实际需要以及目前研究政治社会学的实际可能，系统地论述政治社会学的理论框架和基本理论观点。《政治社会学》的基本出发点有三个，一是如何使中国公共福利最大化，二是政治权力是人类公共福利问题的重要解决之道，三是稳定的现代民主政治（在中国就是社会主义民主政治）是保证政治权力能够增进公共福利的重要制度机制。一句话，《政治社会学》把中国社会公共事务问题的解决和中国社会公共福利水平的提高作为最高的价值目标，把政治权力当做实现这一价值目标的重要手段、把社会主义民主制度当做保证政治权力恰当运用的重要制度基础。基于此，《政治社会学》从各个角度着重探讨了两大主题，一是持续、稳定的政治秩序何以可能，二是持续稳定的社会主义民主政治何以可能。

The essays in this book trace the development of Joel Migdal's 'state-in-society' approach. That approach illuminates how power is exercised around the world, and how and when patterns of power change. Despite the triumph of concept of state in social science literature, actual states have had great difficulty in turning public policies into planned social change. The state-in-society approach points observers to the ongoing struggles over which rules dictating how people will lead their daily lives. These struggles, which ally parts of the state and groups in society against other such coalitions, determine how societies and states create and maintain distinct ways of structuring day-to-day life - the nature of the rules that govern people's behavior, whom they benefit and whom they disadvantage, which sorts of elements unite people and which divide them, what shared meaning people hold about their relations with others and their place in the world.

Social science theories of contentious politics have been based almost exclusively on evidence drawn from the European and American experience, and classic texts in the field make no mention of either the Chinese Communist revolution or the Cultural Revolution - surely two of the most momentous social movements of the twentieth century. Moreover, China's record of popular upheaval stretches back well beyond this century, indeed all the way back to the third century B.C. By bringing together studies of protest that span the Imperial, Republic, and Communist eras, this book introduces Chinese patterns and provides a forum to consider ways in which contentious politics in China might serve to reinforce, refine or reshape theories derived from Western cases.

《政治社会学》是一本出色的新教科书，对当代政治社会学在核心概念方面的争论及其研究方法作了简要评介。书中介绍了国家与市民社会之间的权力关系，探讨了近年来发生的社会变革对上述关系的影响。它广泛涉及了全球化、新社会运动的兴起、新自由主义、公民权利、政治文化和政治参与等重要问题及热点问题，对吉登斯、贝克、埃齐奥尼等社会学名家的观点一一作了评介。