Clothing and identity: Chinese rural students’ embodied transformations in the urban university

Abstract

In the context of enduring urban–rural inequality in China, attention has been drawn to rural students’ encounters in the urban university. In this research, I elicit rural students’ narratives about their (classed) perceptions of clothing and style, as well as the bodily practices embedded in their subjective social mobility experiences in the unique social milieu of China’s context. I argue that participants’ transforming practices entail a nexus of challenge to and also compliance with the urban field. Through the theoretical lens of habitus, I illustrate how rural students strategically transform their ‘style’, as dispositions of habitus, in the urban field to obtain valued forms of embodied capital. At the same time, I emphasise the importance of viewing rural students’ embodied transformations critically, as it entails both their effective generation of valued capital to actively adapt to the urban field and their (involuntary) compliance to the oppressive social relations.

Rural students’ evolving educational aspirations and the sense of ‘fit’ in the changing context of China’s higher education: a life history approach

“…For instance, as manifested in terms like 'chav', the lifestyle of the working-class group has long been associated with 'tastelessness' . In China's context, the rural group has been constructed as lazy and ill-mannered, and the rural youth's cultural forms are described as vulgar (su) and rustic (tu) in the public discourse (Thøgersen, 2017;Li, 2015;Chen, 2021a). As Archer and her colleagues point out, individuals' differential and unequal access to knowledge generates the classed performances of taste (Archer et al, 2007), and the distinction and differentiation between different social groups are maintained through the dispositions of habitus, or in Bourdieu's words, 'taste' (Chen, 2021a).…”

“…In China's context, the rural group has been constructed as lazy and ill-mannered, and the rural youth's cultural forms are described as vulgar (su) and rustic (tu) in the public discourse (Thøgersen, 2017;Li, 2015;Chen, 2021a). As Archer and her colleagues point out, individuals' differential and unequal access to knowledge generates the classed performances of taste (Archer et al, 2007), and the distinction and differentiation between different social groups are maintained through the dispositions of habitus, or in Bourdieu's words, 'taste' (Chen, 2021a). As I have argued elsewhere, though Chinese rural students' social mobility experiences have received extensive attention, their lifestyle and embodied performances in the novel field of the urban university have long been under-examined (Chen, 2021a).…”

“…In this case, I suggest Sun's sense of inferiority and self-perception of being 'rustic' are responses to the symbolic violence he experienced in the urban university. Clothing, as a way to conform with the dominant culture of the field, was inaccessible currency for most rural students (Chen, 2021a). Sun found himself in a state of disorientation both at his university and in the city.…”

Education and the production of inequalities across the Global South and North

“…Education has also become an optical reflection of the social world, both of the exterior as a window – mentioned by Oyarzún et al (2021, this special issue) – and also as a mirror reflecting many of the issues that are ongoing in the wider world. These two optical phenomena can be seen in this special issue where authors place education in dialogue with broader social phenomena such as neoliberalism (Oyarzún et al, 2021); citizenship and belonging (Vincent, 2021); social mobility (Chen, 2021); ableism (Peruzzo, 2021); social reproduction (Verhoeven et al, 2021); migration (Cortés Saavedra, 2021); socioeconomic status (Catalán et al, 2021); and segregation (Carrasco et al, 2021). Furthermore, many of these social issues intersect with each other in the field of education.…”

From Rural China to the Digital Wilds: Negotiating Digital Repertoires to Claim the Right to Speak

“…The past few decades in neoliberal China have witnessed a widening rural–urban divide, and education figures prominently in reproducing such inequality (Chen, 2022; Li, 2013). A recent report from the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China (2021) demonstrates that in 2021, there were more than 6 million rural candidates for the gaokao , China's national college entrance examination, but fewer than 3 percent of rural candidates were able to obtain a place at the top 100 universities in the country.…”