Ethnic minorities form a very substantial proportion of the population of China, with over 100 mi... more Ethnic minorities form a very substantial proportion of the population of China, with over 100 million people in 55 formally designated minority groups inhabiting over 60 per cent of the country’s land area. Poverty and economic inequality of minority groups are widely-recognised problems. However, as this book, based on extensive original research, shows, underlying economic inequality are educational inequality and cultural exclusion, which in turn lead to problems of social mobility and thereby to poverty. The book examines in particular Tibetan, Muslim Hui, Salar and Bonan people. It discusses the policy and practice of education for ethnic minorities, the prevailing chauvinistic Chinese national culture, from which minorities feel excluded, and the attitudes of both majority Han Chinese towards minorities, and of minorities towards their position of cultural exclusion. Besides exploring the forms of cultural exclusion experienced by ethnic minorities, it considers what might be done to promote inclusion, proposing a rethinking of the project of nation building and modernization of state and minority rights in order to achieve the goal of including the minority population of distinctive cultures into wider society.
Drawing on qualitative data collected from men who have sex with men living with HIV in Fujian an... more Drawing on qualitative data collected from men who have sex with men living with HIV in Fujian and Sichuan provinces in southeast and southwest China, respectively, this study aims to understand their lived experiences in the context of social norms, institutions and roles. We argue that informants encountered biographical disruption as a result of their diagnosed infection. They then painfully experienced different forms of social death on the one hand, while on the other, some also exerted agency/autonomy by strategically fighting for their rights and interests in both private and public domains. By examining these lived experiences, this study discusses the biological citizenship of the respondents so as to deepen understanding of embodied life experiences and trajectories.
Drawing upon fieldwork data collected among a group of Tibetan graduates who attended an internat... more Drawing upon fieldwork data collected among a group of Tibetan graduates who attended an internationally linked English training program that dramatically and fundamentally altered their life trajectories, this study argues that
本文聚焦于目前研究不足的少数民族自主创业者。基于2018年9月—2019年1月期间对居于成都和西宁的15位自主创业者的访谈数据,本文以自我表达价值观作为时代背景(创业者的动机来源),运用社会资本... more 本文聚焦于目前研究不足的少数民族自主创业者。基于2018年9月—2019年1月期间对居于成都和西宁的15位自主创业者的访谈数据,本文以自我表达价值观作为时代背景(创业者的动机来源),运用社会资本(创业者的创业目标)概念检视藏族年轻人的创业故事,由此揭示他们创业的动机、特点、复杂性、面临的困境以及对未来的期望。研究发现,在自我表达价值观及生存价值观共存的时代,一些藏族年轻人在尝试通过努力创业,将现代经济、市场与藏族社区、传统联结起来,并且希望由此扩大藏文化与主流文化的交流。因此,这些创业者都在尝试把自己的事业打造成一座桥梁,既勾连传统与现代,也跨越族群与地域边界。然而,他们的这种努力取得的成效目前仍不十分令人满意。
By focusing on education-to-work transitions, this article aims to unveil how the emergence of li... more By focusing on education-to-work transitions, this article aims to unveil how the emergence of life politics (Giddens, 1991) among newly graduated neidiban Tibetan college students contributes to a more complicated and contradictory, yet nuanced, identity crisis and (re)construction against the socio-cultural landscape of contemporary China. Drawing on qualitative data collected from fieldwork, the article examines in detail these graduates’ reflexive perceptions of, and aspirations for, their study, work and life from a life course perspective, and how their perceptions and aspirations reflect a disrupted or coherent sense of their biographic chain, which resulted from their neidiban educational trajectories. Towards the end of the study, the article appropriates the concept of culturally sustainable pedagogy (CSP) proposed by Paris (2012) to discuss the implications of this case study for the neidiban schooling pedagogy
Drawing upon ethnographic data collected from fieldwork among a reading-based community in a coas... more Drawing upon ethnographic data collected from fieldwork among a reading-based community in a coastal city over 10 years, and Michel Foucault's notion of the cultivation of an ethical self, the primary aim of this study is to examine three issues: (1) how do middle-class citizens articulate and practise the cultural activities that they advocate?; (2) are their practices simultaneously individualized and totalized in the way that Foucault demonstrates?; and (3) do these internally oriented practices have civic significance?
Drawing upon the theses of State racism (Michel Foucault), homo sacer (Giorgio Agamben), and safe... more Drawing upon the theses of State racism (Michel Foucault), homo sacer (Giorgio Agamben), and safe citizenship (Cynthia Weber), and fieldwork data collected from a multiethnic primary school in Xinjiang, this paper examines the way in which the state agencies of the local government, the school and mainstream citizens design citizenship for Uyghurs, and how Uyghurs interpret and act upon their citizenship. The findings show why, and how, designed citizenship by the mainstream system for Uyghurs has failed to produce a desirably productive force for the prosperity of both the Uyghur community and society at large. The findings require reconsideration of what could be a win-win citizenship for both the state and the citizen.
Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork in an English training program tailored for rural young Tibet... more Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork in an English training program tailored for rural young Tibetans in West China, this study looks into the complexities, dilemma, and possibilities of particularly the cultural aspects of citizenship in a context where minority people are encountering urban, majority, and global forces as a result of their geographic and cultural mobility. In doing so, the theme of flexible citizenship
(Ong 1999) emerges, which deconstructs the conventional conception of citizenship. This deconstruction is achieved through unveiling the complexity and complication of
citizenship that is in particular evidence in the everyday practices of these Tibetan subjects. The findings capture a re-consideration of citizenship that is open to multiplicity and grows out of practices.
Drawing upon fieldwork conducted with a group of dislocated Tibetan undergraduate students of the... more Drawing upon fieldwork conducted with a group of dislocated Tibetan undergraduate students of the neidi ban program in a Han-predominated university, this paper examines the ways in which these students make sense of their worlds. To achieve this, they have actively and engagingly organized a series of symbolically meaningful activities that draw on the symbolic resources from their cultural traditions, their specific educational trajectory, and their anticipation for the future. The paper, nonetheless, also questions in the conclusion how the program can sustain a promising future that is inseparable from the sense of self-worth among the Tibetan students.
Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in a public school of largely migrant children in suburban Xiame... more Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in a public school of largely migrant children in suburban Xiamen, south-east China, this article first looks into the formation of class lines between people with different backgrounds – migrant, urban or rural – against the suzhi jiaoyu programme of the school. This programme particularly targets the rural populace with a carefully and specifically selected curriculum and quantifiable techniques, in order to turn them into the self-individuated and homogenized subjects of China’s modernization project. However, this article also argues that the coercive concept of suzhi has revealed internal contradictions that render any attempt at consensus on what plural qualities constitute capital Q Quality self-contradictory and ultimately less productive. Lastly, it suggests that suzhi may be better understood as an ever-ongoing project of meaning making that aims to form a body of knowledge in China’s exploration of new paradigms of governance.
International Journal of Educational Development, 2011
Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in an elite Chinese university and English language literature o... more Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in an elite Chinese university and English language literature of audit culture in higher education against the backdrop of Chinese higher education in transition, this paper has discovered that Chinese higher education is undergoing an auditing process. However, this Chinese audit regime is not only guarded by a quantifiable scientism, but also by ideological control of communism and a Confucian guanxixue and paternalism to form a new synthesized pattern of governance, and thus is a different form from neoliberal audit culture in the West. Lastly, the paper warns against the threat posed by the collusion of economic and administrative rationalization to academia in China.
This article looks into the process through which minority cultures and subjects are interpreted ... more This article looks into the process through which minority cultures and subjects are interpreted and defined by the cultural mainstream as inferior and less valuable for the modernization of China, and in consequent need of transformation, particularly through education. In dichotomizing advanced cultures vis-a-vis backward ones, this process has ethnicized minorities' differences. However, within the process itself are internal contradictions that render any attempt at actual education self-contradictory and ultimately unproductive. Using three sources of data - government policy, academic discourse and ethnographic fieldwork - the article provides corroborative evidence relating to the creation of particular images of minority cultures and subjects by the mainstream Han.
Japanese Journal of Political Science, Jan 1, 2005
This paper draws upon fieldwork among a Muslim community in the Qinghai-Gansu borderland areas to... more This paper draws upon fieldwork among a Muslim community in the Qinghai-Gansu borderland areas to explore how the desire of Muslims to achieve social mobility through education is blocked by the larger society which regards them as ‘familiar strangers’. This can be understood as a tension between their desire for full social citizenship in the form of rights to employment and education and the limited social and cultural capital they possess that prevents them from achieving the former. This tension is primarily caused by the party-state's ambivalence over the project of state nation building and minority rights. By focusing on Muslim narratives of their experiences in the cultural exclusion, this case study attempts to scrutinize how the cultural exclusion affects the engagement of ethnic minorities in education as well as the larger society, although it has been recognized that the experience of exclusion varies between minority groups.
Ethnic minorities form a very substantial proportion of the population of China, with over 100 mi... more Ethnic minorities form a very substantial proportion of the population of China, with over 100 million people in 55 formally designated minority groups inhabiting over 60 per cent of the country’s land area. Poverty and economic inequality of minority groups are widely-recognised problems. However, as this book, based on extensive original research, shows, underlying economic inequality are educational inequality and cultural exclusion, which in turn lead to problems of social mobility and thereby to poverty. The book examines in particular Tibetan, Muslim Hui, Salar and Bonan people. It discusses the policy and practice of education for ethnic minorities, the prevailing chauvinistic Chinese national culture, from which minorities feel excluded, and the attitudes of both majority Han Chinese towards minorities, and of minorities towards their position of cultural exclusion. Besides exploring the forms of cultural exclusion experienced by ethnic minorities, it considers what might be done to promote inclusion, proposing a rethinking of the project of nation building and modernization of state and minority rights in order to achieve the goal of including the minority population of distinctive cultures into wider society.
Drawing on qualitative data collected from men who have sex with men living with HIV in Fujian an... more Drawing on qualitative data collected from men who have sex with men living with HIV in Fujian and Sichuan provinces in southeast and southwest China, respectively, this study aims to understand their lived experiences in the context of social norms, institutions and roles. We argue that informants encountered biographical disruption as a result of their diagnosed infection. They then painfully experienced different forms of social death on the one hand, while on the other, some also exerted agency/autonomy by strategically fighting for their rights and interests in both private and public domains. By examining these lived experiences, this study discusses the biological citizenship of the respondents so as to deepen understanding of embodied life experiences and trajectories.
Drawing upon fieldwork data collected among a group of Tibetan graduates who attended an internat... more Drawing upon fieldwork data collected among a group of Tibetan graduates who attended an internationally linked English training program that dramatically and fundamentally altered their life trajectories, this study argues that
本文聚焦于目前研究不足的少数民族自主创业者。基于2018年9月—2019年1月期间对居于成都和西宁的15位自主创业者的访谈数据,本文以自我表达价值观作为时代背景(创业者的动机来源),运用社会资本... more 本文聚焦于目前研究不足的少数民族自主创业者。基于2018年9月—2019年1月期间对居于成都和西宁的15位自主创业者的访谈数据,本文以自我表达价值观作为时代背景(创业者的动机来源),运用社会资本(创业者的创业目标)概念检视藏族年轻人的创业故事,由此揭示他们创业的动机、特点、复杂性、面临的困境以及对未来的期望。研究发现,在自我表达价值观及生存价值观共存的时代,一些藏族年轻人在尝试通过努力创业,将现代经济、市场与藏族社区、传统联结起来,并且希望由此扩大藏文化与主流文化的交流。因此,这些创业者都在尝试把自己的事业打造成一座桥梁,既勾连传统与现代,也跨越族群与地域边界。然而,他们的这种努力取得的成效目前仍不十分令人满意。
By focusing on education-to-work transitions, this article aims to unveil how the emergence of li... more By focusing on education-to-work transitions, this article aims to unveil how the emergence of life politics (Giddens, 1991) among newly graduated neidiban Tibetan college students contributes to a more complicated and contradictory, yet nuanced, identity crisis and (re)construction against the socio-cultural landscape of contemporary China. Drawing on qualitative data collected from fieldwork, the article examines in detail these graduates’ reflexive perceptions of, and aspirations for, their study, work and life from a life course perspective, and how their perceptions and aspirations reflect a disrupted or coherent sense of their biographic chain, which resulted from their neidiban educational trajectories. Towards the end of the study, the article appropriates the concept of culturally sustainable pedagogy (CSP) proposed by Paris (2012) to discuss the implications of this case study for the neidiban schooling pedagogy
Drawing upon ethnographic data collected from fieldwork among a reading-based community in a coas... more Drawing upon ethnographic data collected from fieldwork among a reading-based community in a coastal city over 10 years, and Michel Foucault's notion of the cultivation of an ethical self, the primary aim of this study is to examine three issues: (1) how do middle-class citizens articulate and practise the cultural activities that they advocate?; (2) are their practices simultaneously individualized and totalized in the way that Foucault demonstrates?; and (3) do these internally oriented practices have civic significance?
Drawing upon the theses of State racism (Michel Foucault), homo sacer (Giorgio Agamben), and safe... more Drawing upon the theses of State racism (Michel Foucault), homo sacer (Giorgio Agamben), and safe citizenship (Cynthia Weber), and fieldwork data collected from a multiethnic primary school in Xinjiang, this paper examines the way in which the state agencies of the local government, the school and mainstream citizens design citizenship for Uyghurs, and how Uyghurs interpret and act upon their citizenship. The findings show why, and how, designed citizenship by the mainstream system for Uyghurs has failed to produce a desirably productive force for the prosperity of both the Uyghur community and society at large. The findings require reconsideration of what could be a win-win citizenship for both the state and the citizen.
Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork in an English training program tailored for rural young Tibet... more Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork in an English training program tailored for rural young Tibetans in West China, this study looks into the complexities, dilemma, and possibilities of particularly the cultural aspects of citizenship in a context where minority people are encountering urban, majority, and global forces as a result of their geographic and cultural mobility. In doing so, the theme of flexible citizenship
(Ong 1999) emerges, which deconstructs the conventional conception of citizenship. This deconstruction is achieved through unveiling the complexity and complication of
citizenship that is in particular evidence in the everyday practices of these Tibetan subjects. The findings capture a re-consideration of citizenship that is open to multiplicity and grows out of practices.
Drawing upon fieldwork conducted with a group of dislocated Tibetan undergraduate students of the... more Drawing upon fieldwork conducted with a group of dislocated Tibetan undergraduate students of the neidi ban program in a Han-predominated university, this paper examines the ways in which these students make sense of their worlds. To achieve this, they have actively and engagingly organized a series of symbolically meaningful activities that draw on the symbolic resources from their cultural traditions, their specific educational trajectory, and their anticipation for the future. The paper, nonetheless, also questions in the conclusion how the program can sustain a promising future that is inseparable from the sense of self-worth among the Tibetan students.
Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in a public school of largely migrant children in suburban Xiame... more Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in a public school of largely migrant children in suburban Xiamen, south-east China, this article first looks into the formation of class lines between people with different backgrounds – migrant, urban or rural – against the suzhi jiaoyu programme of the school. This programme particularly targets the rural populace with a carefully and specifically selected curriculum and quantifiable techniques, in order to turn them into the self-individuated and homogenized subjects of China’s modernization project. However, this article also argues that the coercive concept of suzhi has revealed internal contradictions that render any attempt at consensus on what plural qualities constitute capital Q Quality self-contradictory and ultimately less productive. Lastly, it suggests that suzhi may be better understood as an ever-ongoing project of meaning making that aims to form a body of knowledge in China’s exploration of new paradigms of governance.
International Journal of Educational Development, 2011
Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in an elite Chinese university and English language literature o... more Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in an elite Chinese university and English language literature of audit culture in higher education against the backdrop of Chinese higher education in transition, this paper has discovered that Chinese higher education is undergoing an auditing process. However, this Chinese audit regime is not only guarded by a quantifiable scientism, but also by ideological control of communism and a Confucian guanxixue and paternalism to form a new synthesized pattern of governance, and thus is a different form from neoliberal audit culture in the West. Lastly, the paper warns against the threat posed by the collusion of economic and administrative rationalization to academia in China.
This article looks into the process through which minority cultures and subjects are interpreted ... more This article looks into the process through which minority cultures and subjects are interpreted and defined by the cultural mainstream as inferior and less valuable for the modernization of China, and in consequent need of transformation, particularly through education. In dichotomizing advanced cultures vis-a-vis backward ones, this process has ethnicized minorities' differences. However, within the process itself are internal contradictions that render any attempt at actual education self-contradictory and ultimately unproductive. Using three sources of data - government policy, academic discourse and ethnographic fieldwork - the article provides corroborative evidence relating to the creation of particular images of minority cultures and subjects by the mainstream Han.
Japanese Journal of Political Science, Jan 1, 2005
This paper draws upon fieldwork among a Muslim community in the Qinghai-Gansu borderland areas to... more This paper draws upon fieldwork among a Muslim community in the Qinghai-Gansu borderland areas to explore how the desire of Muslims to achieve social mobility through education is blocked by the larger society which regards them as ‘familiar strangers’. This can be understood as a tension between their desire for full social citizenship in the form of rights to employment and education and the limited social and cultural capital they possess that prevents them from achieving the former. This tension is primarily caused by the party-state's ambivalence over the project of state nation building and minority rights. By focusing on Muslim narratives of their experiences in the cultural exclusion, this case study attempts to scrutinize how the cultural exclusion affects the engagement of ethnic minorities in education as well as the larger society, although it has been recognized that the experience of exclusion varies between minority groups.
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It discusses the policy and practice of education for ethnic minorities, the prevailing chauvinistic Chinese national culture, from which minorities feel excluded, and the attitudes of both majority Han Chinese towards minorities, and of minorities towards their position of cultural exclusion. Besides exploring the forms of cultural exclusion experienced by ethnic minorities, it considers what might be done to promote inclusion, proposing a rethinking of the project of nation building and modernization of state and minority rights in order to achieve the goal of including the minority population of distinctive cultures into wider society.
(Ong 1999) emerges, which deconstructs the conventional conception of citizenship. This deconstruction is achieved through unveiling the complexity and complication of
citizenship that is in particular evidence in the everyday practices of these Tibetan subjects. The findings capture a re-consideration of citizenship that is open to multiplicity and grows out of practices.
It discusses the policy and practice of education for ethnic minorities, the prevailing chauvinistic Chinese national culture, from which minorities feel excluded, and the attitudes of both majority Han Chinese towards minorities, and of minorities towards their position of cultural exclusion. Besides exploring the forms of cultural exclusion experienced by ethnic minorities, it considers what might be done to promote inclusion, proposing a rethinking of the project of nation building and modernization of state and minority rights in order to achieve the goal of including the minority population of distinctive cultures into wider society.
(Ong 1999) emerges, which deconstructs the conventional conception of citizenship. This deconstruction is achieved through unveiling the complexity and complication of
citizenship that is in particular evidence in the everyday practices of these Tibetan subjects. The findings capture a re-consideration of citizenship that is open to multiplicity and grows out of practices.