Bourdieu and Education of Asia Pacific – serie

In this book, Mu crafts a sociology of resilience through his multi-year research with Australian students. The content is not merely concerned with individual achievements in precarious conditions but also ponders over transformative, reflexive, and power-rejective everyday practices that make social change possible, probable, and even inevitable. Since Emmy Werner and her colleagues discovered the "self-righting" and "invincible" children on the Hawaiian island of Kauai who fared well despite exposure to significant household risks, positive psychology has markedly advanced the knowledge about child and youth resilience to adversities. Yet, many children and adolescents continue to slide through system cracks. This fact does not invalidate psychology of resilience; rather, it urges new frameworks to break the reproductive circle of inequality. Reframing the traditional psychological notion of resilience through recourse to Bourdieu’s relational and reflexive sociology, the book moves beyond individual adaptation to adverse conditions and takes a deep dive into sociological resilience to structural problems. It offers school professionals and educational researchers an epistemological tool to reapproach resilience and reappropriate Bourdieu for social change. Offering scholarship that will interest researchers in the areas of child and youth resilience, sociology of resilience, and sociology of education, the volume is written to engage with the intellectual work of both established scholars and emerging researchers within Australia and beyond. The empirical analyses also provide useful insights for educational professionals in schools and resilience researchers in universities.

In this book, Mu crafts a sociology of resilience through his multi-year research with Australian students. The content is not merely concerned with individual achievements in precarious conditions but also ponders over transformative, reflexive, and power-rejective everyday practices that make social change possible, probable, and even inevitable. Since Emmy Werner and her colleagues discovered the "self-righting" and "invincible" children on the Hawaiian island of Kauai who fared well despite exposure to significant household risks, positive psychology has markedly advanced the knowledge about child and youth resilience to adversities. Yet, many children and adolescents continue to slide through system cracks. This fact does not invalidate psychology of resilience; rather, it urges new frameworks to break the reproductive circle of inequality. Reframing the traditional psychological notion of resilience through recourse to Bourdieu’s relational and reflexive sociology, the book moves beyond individual adaptation to adverse conditions and takes a deep dive into sociological resilience to structural problems. It offers school professionals and educational researchers an epistemological tool to reapproach resilience and reappropriate Bourdieu for social change. Offering scholarship that will interest researchers in the areas of child and youth resilience, sociology of resilience, and sociology of education, the volume is written to engage with the intellectual work of both established scholars and emerging researchers within Australia and beyond. The empirical analyses also provide useful insights for educational professionals in schools and resilience researchers in universities.

Bourdieu’s sociology has traditionally been confined to the limits of its French national context. This edited collection seeks to challenge these boundaries, applying Bourdieu’s analysis of practice to Chinese education as it gains relevance and attention around the globe. This book stems from the conviction that empirical investigation and conceptual inventiveness are needed to understand the historical and contextual particularities of Sino-foreign higher education. It brings the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu to the specificity of higher education in and for China and the multi-scalar complexity of higher education beyond the nation. Aggregating recent Bourdieu-informed investigations of empirical worlds of Sino-foreign higher education, the volume mainly considers two problems: structures and strategies of advantage behind institutional and individual action in Sino-foreign higher education; and student participation in the practices of that higher education. The volume probes the potential of Bourdieusian theory and methodology for understanding Chinese higher education beyond the nation. This book is written to engage with the intellectual work of both established scholars and higher degree research students within China and beyond. The empirical studies provide useful insights for educational leaders in Chinese higher education sectors and in the universities of English-dominant western countries where students and researchers from China have been a growing presence. The theoretical and methodological discussions will be pertinent to scholars who are interested in Bourdieu’s sociology and sociology of higher education.

Bourdieu’s sociology has traditionally been confined to the limits of its French national context. This edited collection seeks to challenge these boundaries, applying Bourdieu’s analysis of practice to Chinese education as it gains relevance and attention around the globe. This book stems from the conviction that empirical investigation and conceptual inventiveness are needed to understand the historical and contextual particularities of Sino-foreign higher education. It brings the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu to the specificity of higher education in and for China and the multi-scalar complexity of higher education beyond the nation. Aggregating recent Bourdieu-informed investigations of empirical worlds of Sino-foreign higher education, the volume mainly considers two problems: structures and strategies of advantage behind institutional and individual action in Sino-foreign higher education; and student participation in the practices of that higher education. The volume probes the potential of Bourdieusian theory and methodology for understanding Chinese higher education beyond the nation. This book is written to engage with the intellectual work of both established scholars and higher degree research students within China and beyond. The empirical studies provide useful insights for educational leaders in Chinese higher education sectors and in the universities of English-dominant western countries where students and researchers from China have been a growing presence. The theoretical and methodological discussions will be pertinent to scholars who are interested in Bourdieu’s sociology and sociology of higher education.

For more than 40 years, researchers have explored the utility of Bourdieu’s sociology for settings beyond the French and Algerian contexts of its origin. This edited collection has a focus on China, applying Bourdieu’s analysis of practice as Chinese education gains relevance and attention around the globe. Grounded in empirical research, Recontextualising and Recontesting Bourdieu in Chinese Education advances Bourdieu’s analysis of practice beyond national scales while producing new knowledge about the generation of habitus, mobilities, and languages in relation to Chinese education. Locating Chinese education within national and transnational contexts, this collection grapples with the structural invariances and inequivalences between Chinese education and society on the one hand, and social spaces in other parts of the world on the other hand. Through chapters that examine social mobility in the context of cross-border movement and delve into questions of language and power, this book recontests and problematises the use of Bourdieu’s sociology to theorise social classification and differentiation in China. This book is essential reading for Chinese educational researchers and practitioners, Bourdieusian scholars with particular interests in education, and sociologists of education broadly.

For more than 40 years, researchers have explored the utility of Bourdieu’s sociology for settings beyond the French and Algerian contexts of its origin. This edited collection has a focus on China, applying Bourdieu’s analysis of practice as Chinese education gains relevance and attention around the globe. Grounded in empirical research, Recontextualising and Recontesting Bourdieu in Chinese Education advances Bourdieu’s analysis of practice beyond national scales while producing new knowledge about the generation of habitus, mobilities, and languages in relation to Chinese education. Locating Chinese education within national and transnational contexts, this collection grapples with the structural invariances and inequivalences between Chinese education and society on the one hand, and social spaces in other parts of the world on the other hand. Through chapters that examine social mobility in the context of cross-border movement and delve into questions of language and power, this book recontests and problematises the use of Bourdieu’s sociology to theorise social classification and differentiation in China. This book is essential reading for Chinese educational researchers and practitioners, Bourdieusian scholars with particular interests in education, and sociologists of education broadly.

Based on a three-year life story study of students from working-class backgrounds at four elite universities in China, this book offers a new way to understand and be inspired by Bourdieu.This book shows how Bourdieu’s ideas can be used to go beyond the analysis of domination and imagine a positive sociology of emancipation. Drawing on life stories of high-achieving students from working-class backgrounds, who experienced extreme social mobility in the education system and beyond, this book tracks multi-scalar and multi-layered class domination while documenting vivid experiences of living with and over structural disadvantages, forms of working-class ‘intelligence’, reflexive strategies, ‘failures’ of social reproduction, and moments of ‘mutations’. Through constant comparisons between life stories and Bourdieu, hopes and costs of upward social mobility, and possibilities and boundaries of transcendence, this book reflects on different conceptualisations of working-class reflexivity and suggests a vision of emancipation that can allow and encourage ways and values of ‘commoning’. This book highlights a relational perspective of understanding class and class struggles, which in turn introduces a relational perspective of (re)imagining reflexivity and transcendence.This book will appeal to students and scholars of Bourdieu, sociology of education, and education in China.

Based on a three-year life story study of students from working-class backgrounds at four elite universities in China, this book offers a new way to understand and be inspired by Bourdieu.This book shows how Bourdieu’s ideas can be used to go beyond the analysis of domination and imagine a positive sociology of emancipation. Drawing on life stories of high-achieving students from working-class backgrounds, who experienced extreme social mobility in the education system and beyond, this book tracks multi-scalar and multi-layered class domination while documenting vivid experiences of living with and over structural disadvantages, forms of working-class ‘intelligence’, reflexive strategies, ‘failures’ of social reproduction, and moments of ‘mutations’. Through constant comparisons between life stories and Bourdieu, hopes and costs of upward social mobility, and possibilities and boundaries of transcendence, this book reflects on different conceptualisations of working-class reflexivity and suggests a vision of emancipation that can allow and encourage ways and values of ‘commoning’. This book highlights a relational perspective of understanding class and class struggles, which in turn introduces a relational perspective of (re)imagining reflexivity and transcendence.This book will appeal to students and scholars of Bourdieu, sociology of education, and education in China.

This book provides an empirical examination of the meso-level policy enactment of transnational higher education in the context of China.China’s national policies have not been mechanically implemented at the sub-national level: the strategic enactment is always accompanied by great creativity, innovation, and/or even resistance. From the prism of Bourdieu’s relational sociology, this study moves away from the traditional centralization-decentralization model, or policy experiment hypothesis, to examine how Chinese local officials’ practices are simultaneously full of “invention and improvisation” and confined “within the constraints and limits initially set on its inventions”. By so doing, the book extends the application of Bourdieu’s thinking tools to the arena of critical policy analysis through the establishment of the internal structure to separate habitus and the practice it generated, thereby refuting any determinism or objectivism criticism to Bourdieu’s most contested concept habitus.This book will be of great interest to Bourdieusian scholars with particular interests in higher education and sociologists of education more broadly.

Since the implementation of the Open Door Policy, studying abroad, or Chinese Liuxue, has undergone significant transitions. This book reveals how Chinese students prepare for Western universities through international schooling. It explores their motivations and strategies within China’s evolving educational landscape.Using surveys, interviews, field observations, and policy analysis, the authors uncover how families navigate the tension between meritocracy and global higher education. Through an innovative approach to analyzing students’ pre-mobility experiences, the authors trace students’ pathways through international schools and agencies, showing how these institutions bridge the Chinese and Western educational systems. Key insights include the ‘field-habitus match’ concept, which explains successful and complex transitions, and how international education adapts to local values.This book is an essential resource for educators, international school administrators, policymakers, and scholars of the sociology of education, transnational studies, and Asian education. It is also useful for librarians and professionals in global student services.

This book uses Bourdieu’s sociological approach for research as a jumping-off point for framing our understandings and analyses of China and Chinese education. Three major themes—inequality, competition, and change—are explored across several theoretical and contextual bases. Bringing together top scholars in the field, the volume examines empirical studies that analyse social (im)mobility through education for students affected by the social divides of class, culture and rural/urban locations; teacher identity and the field of schooling in the current Chinese environment and going forward; and the university as an institution for the production of knowledge about education in the globalising academy. Offering insights into the historical and cultural context for China’s educational landscape, the contributions of this book revisit Bourdieusian concepts from a new empirical vantage point and bring together key studies that illuminate new pathways for the study of Chinese sociology of education.