伦敦政经学院中国比较研究网(China in Comparative Perspective Network, LSE)常向群博士(Dr. Xiangqun Chang)承继费孝通的研究,通过探讨自1979 年以来中国农民日常生活的社会支持安排,研究了江村村民们个人之间的和个人与体制之间的关系。试图将礼尚往来这个深植于中国文化中的短语发展为一个称为「礼尚—往来」的概念工具,进而贡献于世界人类学和社会学这两个学科,从而使这两个学科的教科书中,首次增添来自对中国的相关内容的研究。此概念工具亦有助于理解社会人类学家华生(James L. Watson, 又译屈佑天)在研究中国的丧葬习俗时所提出的问题:「是什么使中国社会聚合在一起?」(What holds Chinese society together?)
常向群
祖籍中国沈阳,长于南昌,现为英籍并定居于伦敦。政治学学士、社会学硕士、社会人类学博士。现为伦敦政经学院中国比较研究网研究员、中国比较网负责人、《中国比较研究》责任主编。发表过近百万字的中文著述,代表作为《马克思主义社会学论稿》。英文著作包括:Social Support in Rural China (1979-1991): A Statistical Report on Ten Villages (Co-author with Stephan Feuchtwang, London: City University, 1996); Socio-economic Transformation in China and Chinese Woman (Co-editor with West, Zhao and Cheng, Basingstoke, London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1999)。
Dr Xiangqun Chang is a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Anthropology and coordinator of the China in Comparative Perspective Network (CCPN). She is also special-term professor at the Centre for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Fudan University, and visiting professor at the School of Humanities and Law, Northeastern University. Before coming to the UK, as a university lecturer in sociology, she was extensively published (amounting to one million Chinese characters). Since working and studying in the UK she has developed extensive skills in both quantitative and qualitative analysis and applied them to many projects. Based on a thorough and detailed ethnography of a Chinese village with longitudinal comparisons, she has been developing a general analytical concept—lishang-wanglai (礼尚─往来)—a Chinese model of reciprocity, relatedness and social networks. Currently she is testing the lishang-wanglai model in the area of Chinese entrepreneur relationships inside and outside China with both inter-disciplinary and comparative approaches.