Embodied confidence as life-long cultural capital: Children’s On-stage performances in parents’ eyes in northeast China

• In Event: Poster session 2

Proposal

Abstract: This article explores why Chinese parents are keen to urge their children to build up embodied self-confidence by actively participating in on-stage performances. Drawing on in-depth interviews with fourteen parents whose children enroll in a speech-giving training institution in northeast China, this study finds out that these parents believe gaining embodied self-confidence is a critical method of accumulating certain forms of cultural capitals. Furthermore, the embodied confidence will bring their children desirable social rewards in the future. This article argues that self-confidence is not only a desirable end that these parents expect their children to reach through the on-stage performances, but also a critical means of how to live a successful life in parents’ eyes rather than their children’s.

Introduction
Chinese people are keen to achieve educational success by investing much time, money and hopes. Extra-curricular activities have become an important part of their children’s life, seeking to accumulate certain competences such as speech-giving, singing, and dancing, etc. (Shih & Yi, 2014). While self-confidence is one of the goals parents want their children to obtain through these activities. Drawing on a case study of a speech-giving training institution in northeast China, I undertook observation in on-stage performances and interviewed fourteen parents what they want their children to acquire and why children can build up self-confidence. This paper explores how these parents perceive the interplays between confidence and successful life and why they have such perceptions.

Theoretical framework
Bourdieu divides the concept of cultural capital into three forms: the embodied state, the institutionalized state and the objectified state. The embodied cultural capital refers to cultural capital in the form of long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body, which presupposes a long-lasting process of embodiment that requires personal effort (Bourdieu 1986). In order to enhancing children’s embodied cultural capital, parents devote too much to organizing off-school activities (Lareau, 2003; Nagel, 2010).
The existing research on Chinese parents' participation in non-academic extracurricular activities mostly uses Bourdieu's cultural capital theory as a perspective (Shih & Yi, 2014; Lau & Cheng, 2016; Bin-li, Meng-yi, & Xue-heng, 2017). Inspired by the literature, this study also uses cultural capital as a lens to see parents’ perceptions on the process of confidence building. Different from the existing studies, this paper uses a holistic approach to use Bourdieu’s ideas of cultural capital to make the theorizing possible. Discussions on cultural capital also link to Bourdieu’s other important concepts like field, habitus and practice (Bourdieu &Wacquant, 1992).
In this study, the accumulation of cultural capital first happens in a specific ‘field’, within which people believe that the embodied self-confidence is also the embodiment of one’s cultural capital. Moreover, it will eventually bring one social rewards. To gain such rewards, to these believers, needs to reconstruct the child’s habitus, which is passed down by their parents. In this sense, performing on the stage is not only an effort of restructuring one’s habitus, but also a hope of practice in which parents invest.

The making of a confident child on stage: desires and exercises
Parents hope their children get exercise (duanlian) via performing program on stage. Duanlian is a Chinese word which has been used for thousands of years but given some new meanings in contemporary China. Parents in this study often use duanlian in terms of self-cultivation and improving one’s social skills. The stage is a field within which children have to learn how to articulate themselves. During the process of articulation, children need to not only adjust their mind but also control their body to restructure their problematic habits in their parents’ eyes such as inconfidence and shyness.
Parents hope their children can achieve the embodied self-confidence, which is a critical evidence of how a child construct his/her identity. Parents believe that children’s confidence comes from two related aspects: self-awareness and others’ evaluations to them. The on-stage performance provides opportunities for children discover themselves, completing the transformation of self-cognition, from “whether I can do it” to “I am able to do it well”. Such transition, many parents believe, will make a child confident and bring the child a bright future.

The future-oriented practice of confidence
The embodied self-confidence is a symbol of a child’s competence. Parents believe that confidence makes a child positive and optimistic, which will also affect the child’s attitudes toward challenges. Eventually children who have the confidence will be distinguished from their peers. As part of the rewards, they become ‘good students’ and ‘good children’. In this sense, self-confidence becomes an approach to morality.
Parents regard confidence as habitus, contributing children to obtain constantly capitals by practicing in any fields. The accumulation of these capitals will give children a good future, which is also these parents’ expected life image.

Discussion and conclusion
The article examines why Chinese parents are keen to urge their children to build up self-confidence by actively participating in on-stage performances. The findings are similar to the existing research on parents' participation in extracurricular activities. Parents in China and elsewhere believe that extracurricular activities can cultivate children's positive attitudes and behaviors, improve interpersonal skills, self-confidence, optimistic attitude, comprehensive quality and ability (Dunn, Kinney, & Hofferth, 2003;Kremer-Sadlik, Izquierdo, & Fatigante, 2010; Jelani, Tan, & Mohd-Zaharim, 2015; Lau & Cheng, 2016). As some studies show that students in the speech training school, such as public-speaking class or club, actively seek to be objectified on stage, to become self-aware, creating ‘bright, positive’ selves under the gaze of an audience (Dunn, 2016; Hampel, 2017) . While this study also explores how these parents see that on-stage performance can give children confidence and why.
To Chinese people, embodied self-confidence is a western concept rather than a local culture legacy (Hampel, 2017). The fever of pursuing it is rooted in desires of economic and social rewards(Fein 2015). Similarly, parents in this study also have such desires which drive them to make their children a confident child not only on the stage of performance at present, but also on the metaphoric sense of life stage in the future.

Authors

• XIANYU ZHANG, East China Normal University

• XUAN DONG, East China Normal University