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Shaping the educational policy field: ‘cross-field effects’ in the Chinese context
Abstract
This paper theorises how politics, economy and migrant population policies influence educational policy, utilising Bourdieusian theoretical resources to analyse the Chinese context. It develops the work of Lingard and Rawolle on cross-field effects and produces an updated three-step analytical framework. Taking the policy issue of the schooling of internal migrant children as an example, it analyses how a range of fields – political, economic and public policy – ‘export’ their logics of practice into the educational policy field (as a sub-field of the public policy field) and consolidate the changes. The cross-field effects shape the state school enrolment policy and the relative positions of agents and the relative value of their capital in the educational policy field. This paper demonstrates the analytical capacity of Bourdieusian theoretical resources for policy analysis in the Chinese context, by illustrating how the inequalities experienced by migrant families have been intensified in education by cross-field effects.
... However, Bourdieu's theorizing of habitus and practices in relation to the autonomous character of the field seemed inadequate in explaining teachers' dispositions manifesting effects of the logics of multiple fields-while teachers' practices indicated that their dispositions were largely shaped by the logic of datafication in the schooling field, these practices also exhibited habitus influenced by the policy field, even as the logics of these two fields were in tension. In navigating this analytical challenge, the study engaged more recent theorizing regarding the heteronomous character of fields-fields may be related by agents, and such efforts may result in cross-field relations (Lingard & Rawolle, 2004;Yu, 2018). This more recent and emerging body of theorizing emphasizes how the field may not be fully autonomous, and that intersectionality may exist between different fields through the influence of agents from these fields. ...
... This more recent and emerging body of theorizing emphasizes how the field may not be fully autonomous, and that intersectionality may exist between different fields through the influence of agents from these fields. Such intersectionality denotes the possibility for a broader understanding of how agents' habitus may be shaped not only by the internal logics of the field but also by the cross-field effects (Yu, 2018). In this study, the teachers appeared as the agents, who through their agency, mediated the policy and schooling field even in a very contested context, created by datafication and the curriculum-assessment disjuncture. ...
The use of (test) performance data for governing school and teachers' work, defined as datafication, has emerged as a global trend in education. However, how this trend plays out in relation to English language education in the local context, particularly in developing societies, has not received notable attention. Taking Bangladesh secondary education as a case, and drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's conceptual resources, this study highlights how datafication unfolds in schooling contexts and examines the "relations" between this trend and English language teachers' dispositions and pedagogical practices. The study employs a qualitative case study and draws on principal and teacher interviews, and classroom observation as data sources. Findings reveal that datafi-cation has emerged as a practical logic of the schooling field, guiding schools and teachers' dispositions in specific ways, which contribute to reductive practices. Data also indicate teachers' capacity to mediate between competing logics and innovate practices, which are situated and "local." Based on these findings, this article argues that understanding the interplay between the specific logics of schooling, language education policy and teachers' structuring dispositions is key not only to understanding the nature of pedagogical practices, but also to establishing meaningful "relations" between policy and schooling practices amid growing datafication.
... State and institutions' policymaking identified above resonates strongly with Yu's use of 'cross-field effects' theory to explain how the influences from economic, political, and other public policy fields coalesce changes into the education policy field (Yu 2018). Lingard, Rawolle and Taylor also argue that policies are relational in the sense that the formation of a global education policy field, which is seen as 'consisting of a site of contest between bureaucrats, policy advisors, politicians and "spin doctors"', is the result of the spread of logics of practice from other policy fields (Lingard, Rawolle, and Taylor 2005, 11). ...
Underlying current research on China’s world-class university (WCU) policy approaches are analytical foci that privilege the agency of social actors and the problem-solving approach to policy analysis. Foucauldian poststructuralists draw our attention to policy document, which is seen as a discourse that organizes and administers society. Inspired by Foucault, Carol Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to Be?’ approach (WPR) views policy document as a technology of governmentality. As proposed solutions to a problem, policy text produces the very problem that it seeks to address. Carol Bacchi draws our analytical attention to the rationalities, technologies of governing and subjectification effects created by particular problem representations in the WCU policy. Using WPR, this paper shows that WCU is represented as merely a technical, managerial and organizational problem. Such representations naturally reify WCU in material terms, such as research output, and in a temporal form of state planning. Genealogically, the root of WCU can be traced to the neoliberal movement of knowledge economy. However, Shanghai Ranking overturned this center-periphery landscape in disseminating the concept of WCU. China’s one-party state means that WCU is pursued at the expense of sacrificing social sciences and subjecting academics and students to become ‘red experts.’
... However, these loose state school enrolment criteria changed after 2013. In the broader social context in which the central government launched the Decision of the CCP Central Committee on the Main Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening Reform to strictly limit the (migrant) population size in the super-large cities, the local governments in metropolises started to establish restrictive state school enrolment criteria for migrant children in compulsory education age, requiring parents to obtain a number of documents (Yu, 2018). The post-2013 schooling policy has a subtext of limiting the migrant student population in local schools. ...
... Migrants are at a disadvantaged position in the dynamics and tensions in the political practice. While (some of) their voices can still be heard by the public through mass media and be included in the policy agenda by the government, migrants, like other disadvantaged social groups, can hardly engage in policymaking processes, which are dominated by the government (Yu 2018). ...
This article focuses on the educational quality of the newly emerged quasi-state schools for rural migrant children in urban China. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 government officers, school leaders, teachers and migrant parents in Shanghai. Adopting a theoretical perspective of policy as a temporary settlement of interests, the article deconstructs the power relations that constructed the disadvantaged positionality of these schools in the local school system. What can be identified from the empirical data is the emergence of an “interim quasi-state school system” with three interrelated features: it belongs to the state sector, offers quasi-state education and has an interim nature. Under the local government’s low-cost and inferior schooling approach, the whole system is treated as an emergency mechanism for solving the floating children’s schooling problem, rather than as regular schools offering high quality education. While realising the children’s right to education, this system does not guarantee them a “good” education.
... Cities are becoming 'smart' and data-driven; we are seeing radical changes in transport (self-driving cars), in retail (online shopping), in energy (smart grids and smart homes), in banking (mobile apps), and in other sectors. It is fair to assume that artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning and other big data-driven technologies will also influence the educational sector due to 'cross-field effects' (Yu, 2017;Rawolle, 2005). Norway and China start from contrasting positions in developing policies for how big data could be used in education. ...
... As noted above, the Chinese government has been making efforts to provide equal educational opportunities for migrant children (Liu et al., 2017;Yu, 2018). However, these children are treated as an undifferentiated group within existing policies, which do not entail special support for the most disadvantaged group (those with rural-urban migrant backgrounds). ...
This paper analyzes whether internal migrant children have negative peer effects on students’ academic achievements and to explore the mechanisms of these effects, if present. We firstly divided the migrant students into different groups according to their migrant experience. We then examined peer effects of different groups of migrant children, and the effects in differently ranked schools were particularly explored. It is found that rural-urban migrant children had negative peer effects, particularly in low- and middle-ranked schools, while the urban-urban migrant children had no negative peer effects. Endogenous and correlated effects are found as the mechanism of these peer effects.
Referring to Bourdieu’s three-level analysis and trio concepts, the authors offer a third-level analysis of the academic and social adaptation of 32 rural students in four elite universities in Shanghai, China. Respondents with rural habitus and cultural capital had difficulties in adapting to the field of an elite university in an urban city and were disadvantaged in making themselves a competitive portfolio. But many respondents changed habitus and acquired new cultural capital, so that they looked urbane, survived academic crises and got prepared for the labour market. Nevertheless, some were not confident of securing a well-paid professional job in competitive Shanghai, and few chose to disengage from social competition. Amid a structural explanation of social reproduction, this analysis demonstrates room for agency and possibilities for social change by addressing a characteristic of the field of higher education overlooked in many Bourdieusian analyses: the transformative nature of university education.
In China, the government had created a policy-friendly educational setting for rural migrant children for a long period after 2001. Yet in 2013, in some metropolitan areas such as Beijing and Shanghai, the schooling policy retuned to more demanding criteria, bringing hardships to many migrant families. This paper examines the power relations underlying the formation of the post-2013 restrictive policy. Utilizing Foucauldian theoretical resources, it develops the work of Bowe, Ball and Gold on policy cycle and produces an updated analytical framework. The findings show that the discursive formation permeating the four coexisting and permeable contexts of the policy trajectory legitimizes the following statements: recruiting migrant children leads to declining educational quality; state school education is a restricted type of social welfare open only to the “contributors to the city”; and standardization is necessary for school enrolment practice. The power relations lie beneath the discursive practices are the exam-orientated education discourse and the disciplinary power of the privileged over the dominated, which objectivize migrants as “outsiders” and a risk to educational quality. This paper demonstrates the analytical capacity of Foucauldian theoretical resources for policy analysis in the Chinese context.
Bourdieu’s concept of field offers an alternative explanation for the inevitable gap between policy initiative and implementation. While the existing literature mostly concentrated on the dichotomy of macro- and micro-politics in enacting education policies, the missing attention to meso-level, local governments as policy interpreters and implementers in some developing countries with a vast territory, China and Russia, for example, has hindered deeper exploration in policy studies. Adopting cross-field effects as the theoretical base and applying Bourdieu's conceptual triad as a whole, rather than considering habitus, practice, or field separately, this study examines Chinese transnational higher education (TNHE) policy enactment by subnational authorities, aiming to: first, contextualize Bourdieu's theoretical and empirical approaches in various political/economic systems while consider the policy practice at meso-level; second, demonstrate the essentiality of conversation rate and standard of capitals in field analysis; and third, based on these analyses, explore the formation of institutional habitus as a way of explaining the perennial inequality in the Chinese higher education (HE) system. The paper concludes with a theoretical reflection that Bourdieu’s ever-developing definition of habitus and the criticism of his unavoidable relapse to objectivism result from the indiscriminate use of individual and institutional habitus.
This paper investigates the implementation of education policy for migrant children in urban China. Historically, rural and urban residents in China were separated by the hukou system, and rural children were not allowed to attend urban schools. Since the relaxation of the hukou system in the early 1980s, large numbers of rural families migrated to cities. The right of migrant children to education in urban China was formally recognised by the government in a series of policies starting in 2001. The research reported, here, reveals that migrant children did not have equal access to urban schools nor did they enjoy an equally good education to that of urban children. Based on 53 in-depth interviews with school principals, teachers and pupils in two provincial capitals in China, this paper explores the main factors affecting the implementation of education policy for migrant children. The research demonstrates that policies relating to equal admissions criteria were not implemented as intended, with migrant children not having equal access to schools. However, policies relating to non-segregation and academic support were implemented as intended. It is argued that, at the school level, this is a result of the examination-oriented system, and schools’ responses to this.
This article looks at the changing frameworks for the institutional and cultural incorporation of second-generation rural migrants in Shanghai. Beginning in 2008, Shanghai launched a new policy of accepting migrant children into urban public schools at primary and secondary levels. I show that the hukou (household registration) is still a critical social boundary in educational institutions, shaping uneven distribution of educational resources and opportunities, as well as hierarchical recognition of differences between urbanites and migrants. I have coined the term “segmented incorporation” to characterize a new receiving context, in which systematic exclusion has given way to more subtle forms of institutional segmentation which reproduces cultural prejudice and reinforces group boundaries.
Theoretically informed by the sociological work of Pierre Bourdieu, this analysis represents an initial attempt to examine what it would mean to analyse educational policy as a social field. By employing such a frame, two main claims are addressed: (1) that the sociological perspective of Bourdieu offers valuable potential for understanding both educational policy, per se, and what it means to analyse educational policy; and (2) that there is good reason to question claims about shifts in power relations in US educational policy. Where other contemporary analyses of educational policy draw on some of Bourdieu's conceptual framework, in this paper I hope to more systematically elaborate methodological concerns raised when applying a Bourdieuian framework to educational policy. Further, I argue the perspective developed here suggests that in the 1980s US educational policy reforms reveal the historical maturation of a social field which has developed its own autonomy and its own rewards.
This paper focuses on the educational opportunities available to rural migrant children in Beijing. On the basis of fieldwork conducted in migrant communities in 2004–2005, I conclude that administrative and financial barriers, as well as discrimination, prevent migrant children from entering state schools. I discuss the quality of education available in unlicensed private schools, followed by an analysis of the possible reasons for the state's exclusion of migrant children from state schools and its hostility to migrants’ self-provision of education.
The impact of family migration on children's schooling has been the focus of much investigation in western countries. However, there are limited data on such impact in China, despite a large number of rural-to-urban migrants. In-depth interviews were conducted among 20 school teachers in Beijing. Findings reveal that barriers for migrant children to attend public schools include extra financial charge and stigmatization resulting from their migratory status. The schools serving solely migrant children were perceived as having poor teaching facilities and lacking adequately trained teachers. Migrant parents were generally perceived as having limited involvement in their children's schooling. Findings suggest that national policy related to the schooling of migrant children should be improved and support from family and society should be emphasized.
The concept of field forms the centre of Pierre Bourdieu's relational sociology and the notion of 'autonomy' is its keystone. This article explores the usefulness of these underexamined concepts for studying policy in higher education. It begins by showing how Bourdieu's 'field' approach enables higher education to be examined as a distinct and irreducible object of study. It then explores the value and limitations of this conceptualization through analyses of policy during two contrasting moments of transition in the same field. First, the insights offered by a field approach are illustrated by analysing the new student debate over the creation of new universities in early 1960s English higher education. This shows how the field's relatively high autonomy shaped the focus and form of policy debates by refracting economic and political pressures into specifically educational issues. Second, considering contemporary changes in policy highlights how the erosion of the social compact underpinning higher education has increasingly fractured autonomy, necessi-tating the development of Bourdieu's conceptualization. A distinction between positional and relational dimensions of autonomy is introduced to capture an increasing disjuncture between the origins of the actors running higher education and of the principles they are adopting, respectively. These concepts are utilized to illuminate the effects of current moves towards marketization and managerialism in higher education on principles, practices and identities within the field.
This paper explores the establishment of migrant identities through linguistic and sociolinguistic exchanges in a Beijing public school. Drawing on the data from ethnographic observation and interviews, the research demonstrates how small features of language become emblematic of individual and group identities, and how such identities have an impact on the appraisal of migrant pupils’ performance at school as well as in wider frames of macro-political order which often invoke homogeneism within the dominant language ideologies, emphasizing linguistic uniformity and homogeneity.
In this study, we examine migrant stigma and its effect on social capital reconstruction among rural migrants who possess legal rural residence but live and work in urban China. After a review of the concepts of stigma and social capital, we report data collected through in-depth interviews with 40 rural migrant workers and 38 urban residents recruited from Beijing, China. Findings from this study indicate that social stigma against rural migrants is common in urban China and is reinforced through media, social institutions and their representatives, and day-to-day interactions. As an important part of discrimination, stigma against migrant workers creates inequality, undermines trust, and reduces opportunities for interpersonal interactions between migrants and urban residents. Through these social processes, social stigma interferes with the reconstruction of social capital (including bonding, bridging and linking social capital) for individual rural migrants as well as for their communities. The interaction between stigma and social capital reconstruction may present as a mechanism by which migration leads to negative health consequences. Results from this study underscore the need for taking measures against migrant stigma and alternatively work toward social capital reconstruction for health promotion and disease prevention among this population.
This paper is concerned to demonstrate the usefulness of the theory of Bourdieu, including the concepts of field, logics of practice and habitus, to understanding relationships between media and policy, what Fairclough has called the 'mediatization' of policy. Specifically, the paper draws upon Bourdieu's accessible account of the journalistic field as outlined in On television and journalism. The usefulness of this work is illustrated through a case study of a recent Australian science policy, The chance to change. As this policy went through various iterations and media representations, its naming and structure became more aphoristic. This is the mediatization of contemporary policy, which often results in policy as sound bite. The case study also shows the cross-field effects of this policy in education, illustrating how today educational policy can be spawned from developments in other public policy fields.
The paper uses Bourdieu to develop theorising about policy processes in education and to extend the policy cycle approach in a time of globalisation. Use is made of Bourdieu’s concept of social field and the argument is sustained that in the context of globalisation, the field of educational policy has reduced autonomy, with enhanced cross-field effects in educational policy production, particularly from the fields of the economy and journalism. Given the social rather than geographical character of Bourdieu’s concept of social fields, it is also argued that the concept can be, and indeed has to be, stretched beyond the nation to take account of the emergent global policy field in education. Utilising Bourdieu’s late work on the globalisation of the economy through neo-liberal politics, we argue that a non-reified account of the emergent global educational policy field can be provided.
This paper focuses on the education of migrant children in Beijing. As of the late 1990s, the Chinese Government has developed several policies to address educational issues among migrant children. The present study analyses data from interviews with key education personnel in Beijing to explore the outcomes of the implementation of such migrant children’s education (MCE) policies and the reasons for variation from policy design. The data suggest that there is poorer equality in terms of education among migrant vs. local children than the government has reported. Migrant children are faced with numerous strict admission procedures for public schools. The Chinese Government has not prioritised educational equality, despite professing to do so. The capability and motivation of local institutions for policy implementation are less adequate than might be expected. Using Honig’s model of policy implementation, this research shows that the outcomes of the MCE policies are a product of interaction between policy design, participants and implementation context.
Because of the superior condition in the China's big cities, a lot of labors were attracted to enter, which caused a lot of hidden trouble for the city. This paper builds the coupling coordination model to explore the interactional relationship between the population agglomeration, the environment and social economic factors based the data of Beijing and Shanghai from 2000 to 2012. With the empirical research on the present situation of coordinated development of population agglomeration, environment and social economy system, this paper discusses the key factors of sustainable development. The results show that the coordination degree of two cities is weak and tend to verge disorders. The key factors that affect the coordination degree of the two cities are different. This paper provides some policy suggestions for the sustainable development of each city.
Since 2001, the Chinese government had passed a series of policies known as ‘the two primary responsibilities’ to allow the rural migrant children to attend urban public schools. However, what the migrant children actually experienced in and after negotiating access to these schools deserves serious attention from educators, scholars and policymakers. Based on prolonged ethnographic fieldwork in a Beijing public school, this study demonstrated three key aspects of exclusions in migrant children’s schooling experiences, namely, (1) access to school, (2) in-class participations and (3) peer interactions, and examined the ‘hidden curriculum’ in the existing school practices that prevented migrant children from integrating successfully in the urban school settings. We found that academic performance lay at the root of social exclusions, but the local educators’ perceptions of migrant children as outsiders, the urban-oriented school curricular and urban children’s involvement (vis-à-vis migrant children’s little involvement) in the extracurricular activities at school as well as the paid supplementary trainings outside school together formed the ‘hidden curriculum’ that led to the marginalization of migrant students in the urban school system.
The PISA success of Shanghai has aroused open challenge and debate about whether the city is a "model of equity". There have been heated debates about the education of migrant children in Shanghai. This paper analyses publicly accessible policy papers and literature to provide a contextualised interpretation of the major progress and ongoing challenges surrounding the education of migrant children in Shanghai. The paper shows the structural inequalities affecting migrant families and their children. It refers to central as well as local government policies and the constraints these policies face. The analysis shows that Shanghai remains riddled with ongoing challenges that may have been obscured by the PISA success.
The rapid pace of urbanisation in China has seen a massive increase in the movement of the rural population to work and live in urban regions. In this large-scale migration context, the educational, health, and psychological problems of floating children are becoming increasingly visible. Different from extant studies, we focus our investigation on the rural dispositions of floating children through interviews with leaders, teachers, and students in four schools in Beijing. Drawing on Bourdieu’s key notions of habitus, capital, and field, our study indicates that the rural habitus of floating children can differentiate these children from their urban peers. This habitus can be marginalised and stigmatised in certain fields but can be recognised and valued as capital in other fields. Our paper offers some implications for research and practice in relation to the schooling of floating children.
China’s economic growth over the past 30 years has been possible partially due to the particular system of household registration known as hukou or huji. This system, distinguishing between two different types of citizens, i.e., between those with rural status and those with non-rural status, created what some scholars have called a de facto apartheid; a brand of dual-class citizenship. Since hukou status is actually quasi-permanent, a new category of urban workers has appeared in China in the last couple of decades. The expression “rural migrant workers” (nongmingong) identifies a specific category of urban workers—still registered under a rural hukou despite having lived and worked in the cities for many years. They are excluded for this reason from many kinds of benefits that local governments provide to urban hukou-registered citizens. One of the most controversial aspects of this issue is that concerning the schooling of rural workers’ children. The scope of this research is to evaluate the “equality of opportunities” for migrant children and, through the case–study of the City of Hangzhou, governmental policies to reduce the causes of social exclusion at least for future generations. Through literature review, analysis of documents, and semi-structured interviews, we attempt to assert some predictions about the general trends in China on this matter and the expectable outcomes.
This book examines the question of how our knowledge of social life affects, and ought to affect, our way of living it. In so doing, it critically discusses two epistemological models of social science - the positivist and the interpretive - from the viewpoint of the political theories which, it is argued, are implicit in these models; moreover, it proposes a third model - the critical - which is organised around an explicit account of the relation between social theory and practical life. The book has the special merit of being a good overview of the principal current ideas about the relation between social theory and political practice, as well as an attempt at providing a new and more satisfactory account of this relationship. To accomplish this task, it synthesises work from the analytic philosophy of social science with that of the neo-Marxism of the Frankfurt school. © 1975 George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd. All rights reserved.
This paper investigates the causal relationship between urban population, real GDP, electricity production and coal consumption in China for the period 1971–2009. Using a vector autoregression framework and a modified version of the Granger (1969) causality test proposed by Toda and Yamamoto (J. Econ. 66 (1995) 225), the results suggest that there is causality running from GDP to coal consumption. The variance decomposition analysis report that urban population and coal affect electricity production variability over the forecast period. We also find that increasing urban population may negatively affect China's GDP over time. Policy measures aimed at influencing GDP could ultimately affect coal consumption.
A person's identity is shaped by one's life experiences. Aside from family, school forms the major backdrop of the everyday experiences of children and plays an important role in shaping identity. This paper examines education and the development of identity among school-age migrant children enrolled in Beijing's schools. Marginality is the theme running through this analysis. The marginalisation of migrant children in Beijing is defined and sanctioned by the outdated household registration system that excludes them from enrolling in public schools. Many attend segregated migrant children's schools. Even after the government has relaxed its rules to allow migrant children into the public system, they suffer discrimination based on their low social status and rural origin, each reinforcing the other. These experiences shape their sense of identity. They want to stay in Beijing but know they are not accepted. They call themselves as members of their home regions, but would have difficulty fitting into their home communities and have no intention of living there. This study helps us understand how school interactions shape the identity of migrant children not only in Beijing but of the estimated 20 million migrant children in China's other major urban centres albeit with some differences.
The paper undertakes two related exercises; one substantive and one meta‐analytical. The first concerns changes in public sector provision. It is argued that the public sector has been ‘transformed’, in Jessop's terms, from a Keynsian Welfare State to a Schumpeterian Workfare State. This transformation involves fundamental changes to forms of provision, patterns of access, forms of work, client — worker relations, inter‐institutional relations and values and ethics. The constitution of citizenship has also been affected. The second concerns the conception of and engagement with social policy by educational researchers. A template for examination of the ‘surface epistemology’ of education policy research is presented — that is the relationships between conceptualisation, research design and conduct and the interpretation of data. It is argued that there is a basic tension at the heart of education policy research, between a commitment to the pursuit of efficiency and a commitment to the pursuit of social justice.
The present paper explores issues of the educational marginality of migrant children in urban settings in two cities in China. The numbers of urban migrants exceed 100 million and are growing as China modernizes. This is creating tensions between residents and recent arrivals who lack residential registration and access to public services. As a result, migrant children often attend informal, private and usually unregulated schools of low quality organized by their communities. These tend to reinforce social stratification and reproduce marginality across the generations. The paper argues that state failure to provide basic education risks a growing divide between urban residents and recent migrants that has social consequences that must be addressed to remove discriminatory practices and resolve potential conflicts between hosts and migrant communities.
In July 2010, the State Council of the People's Republic of China published an Outline for National Educational Development with a strong conviction to transform China from an economic power into a country of “soft power” and “strength in human resources”. In order to realize such a policy goal, the Chinese government has attempted to review its current education policies and systems to initiate reforms to promote innovation and creativity in education. One of the major reform directions is to foster more collaboration between educational institutions in Mainland China with overseas partners, including institutions from the Greater China region (Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau). Despite the noble policy goals set out by the Chinese government in asserting its soft power through the transformations to be introduced to its education systems and the proposal to engage in international collaborations, many citizens in the Mainland, especially the children of migrant (peasant) workers, are currently confronted with insufficient provision of education. This article critically examines issues confronting peasant worker children's education, with particular reference to the most recent policies and strategies adopted by the governments in Mainland China to deal with the growing educational demands from migrant workers' children. This article will also discuss policy implications for the Chinese government which has failed to deliver quality education to children of peasant workers when China is seeking to become a country strong in human resources.
This paper utilizes Bourdieu’s conceptual frame to examine the mediatized effects of policy processes concerned with the growth and support of knowledge industries in Australia. These policies span education, science, research and other knowledge industries (such as venture capital firms and intellectual property law). The paper argues that some policy processes are best represented as temporary social fields. The nature of these fields can be described by the kinds of cross‐field effects that they produce. A case study of an Australian knowledge economy policy, The chance to change, and associated policy processes demonstrates the broad analytic capacities of Bourdieu’s conceptual frame for policy analysis, when combined with the concepts of cross‐field effects and temporary social field developed here.
Around the world there is a growing consensus that migrant children's rights must be protected, regardless of where they have emigrated from. One of these rights is the right to a public education of equal quality to that granted to non-migrant children regardless of where one's family is registered or pays taxes. This article focuses on migrant children schooling in Shanghai. It will show that three main problems are still impeding migrant children from getting a high-quality education. They are: the inferior quality of migrant children schools; the lack of access to a public school and the much higher costs of schooling; and the high mobility of migrant students. Our conclusion: the education rights of migrant children have become contingent on the wills of urban local governments, public attitudes, and available space in local public schools.
This paper is divided into two sections. The first section presents a concise survey of the intellectual itinerary of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in the French intellectual field. Then, after a short presentation of Bourdieu’s The Social Structures of the Economy, I proceed to a broader discussion of his economic sociology. After a presentation of Bourdieu’s key conceptual contributions, I question some aspects of Bourdieusian sociology with regard to its ambition of historicising the ‘economic field’. I identify the limitations of this historicising project in the extension of the metaphor of the market to virtually all fields of human activities and in a concept of capital which fails to grasp a social relation specific to the historical development of capitalism.
Incl. bibl. p.219-229
Our usual representations of the opposition between the âcivilizedâ and the âprimitiveâ derive from willfully ignoring the relationship of distance our social science sets up between the observer and the observed. In fact, the author argues, the relationship between the anthropologist and his object of study is a particular instance of the relationship between knowing and doing, interpreting and using, symbolic mastery and practical masteryâor between logical logic, armed with all the accumulated instruments of objectification, and the universally pre-logical logic of practice. In this, his fullest statement of a theory of practice, Bourdieu both sets out what might be involved in incorporating oneâs own standpoint into an investigation and develops his understanding of the powers inherent in the second member of many oppositional pairsâthat is, he explicates how the practical concerns of daily life condition the transmission and functioning of social or cultural forms. The first part of the book, âCritique of Theoretical Reason,â covers more general questions, such as the objectivization of the generic relationship between social scientific observers and their objects of study, the need to overcome the gulf between subjectivism and objectivism, the interplay between structure and practice (a phenomenon Bourdieu describes via his concept of the habitus ), the place of the body, the manipulation of time, varieties of symbolic capital, and modes of domination. The second part of the book, âPractical Logics,â develops detailed case studies based on Bourdieuâs ethnographic fieldwork in Algeria. These examples touch on kinship patterns, the social construction of domestic space, social categories of perception and classification, and ritualized actions and exchanges. This book develops in full detail the theoretical positions sketched in Bourdieuâs Outline of a Theory of Practice . It will be especially useful to readers seeking to grasp the subtle concepts central to Bourdieuâs theory, to theorists interested in his points of departure from structuralism (especially fom Lévi-Strauss), and to critics eager to understand what role his theory gives to human agency. It also reveals Bourdieu to be an anthropological theorist of considerable originality and power.
Over the last three decades, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory and research of the post war era. Yet, despite the influence of his work, no single introduction to his wide-ranging oeuvre is available. This book, intended for an English-speaking audience, offers a systematic and accessible overview, providing interpretive keys to the internal logic of Bourdieu's work by explicating thematic and methodological principles underlying his work. The structure of Bourdieu's theory of knowledge, practice, and society is first dissected by Loic Wacquant; he then collaborates with Bourdieu in a dialogue in which they discuss central concepts of Bourdieu's work, confront the main objections and criticisms his work has met, and outline Bourdieu's views of the relation of sociology to philosophy, economics, history, and politics. The final section captures Bourdieu in action in the seminar room as he addresses the topic of how to practice the craft of reflexive sociology. Throughout, they stress Bourdieu's emphasis on reflexivityâhis inclusion of a theory of intellectual practice as an integral component of a theory of societyâand on methodâparticularly his manner of posing problems that permits a transfer of knowledge from one area of inquiry into another. Amplified by notes and an extensive bibliography, this synthetic view is essential reading for both students and advanced scholars.
Supporting Migrant Children’s Compulsory Education through New Mechanisms in Educational Financial System
- X Z Fan
- P Peng
The Report of Social Classes in Contemporary China
- X Lu
On Television and Journalism
- P Bourdieu
Educating Migrant Children: The Effects of Rural-urban Migration on Access to Primary Education
- C Goodburn
School Adaption of Migrant Children in Urban Schools: A Cultural Perspective
- G Y Liu
- S Li
The Policy Dilemma and Solution of Establishment Standard for the Private School of the Children of Rural Migrant Workers in Cities
- N Wu
The Educational Equality and Institutional Guarantee of Migrant Children’s Education
- X Z Fan
Investigation on the Academic Adaptation of Migrant Children in Shanghai: Based on the Comparative Analysis of Primary School for Migrant Children, Informal Primary School and Normal Primary School
- L Li
The Social Altitude of Migrant Children in Urban State Schools
- C X Xu