Schooling as "Eating Bitterness": Educational Discipline and Individuals in Rural China

• In Event: 51.079 - MTCC Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: 51.079-6 - Teaching, Leading, and Learning in Rural Schools

Abstract

This article explores how educational governance engages with rural individuals in Northwest China. Based on an ethnographic study in a rural school in Northwest China, I will explore how school disciplinary regimes shape the individual subjectivities and, at the same time, has been shaped by the individual agencies of the rural students and teachers. This study argues that the educational governance discourses and practices are not short of contradictions in their aims and practices, and the reactions of the rural individuals to the disciplinary powers make the dynamic of educational governance in rural China more complex. By doing so, the article aims to investigate some deeper mechanism and process of the (re)production of social inequalities in rural China.

Author

• Ji Ying, University of Cambridge