Recontextualising and Recontesting Bourdieu in Chinese Education

Book excerpt: 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.