Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T22:29:16.147Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Turning Rurality into Modernity: Suzhi Education in a Suburban Public School of Migrant Children in Xiamen*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2011

Yi Lin
Yi Lin
Affiliation:
Xiamen University. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in a public school of largely migrant children in suburban Xiamen, south-east China, this article first looks into the formation of class lines between people with different backgrounds – migrant, urban or rural – against the suzhi jiaoyu programme of the school. This programme particularly targets the rural populace with a carefully and specifically selected curriculum and quantifiable techniques, in order to turn them into the self-individuated and homogenized subjects of China's modernization project. However, this article also argues that the coercive concept of suzhi has revealed internal contradictions that render any attempt at consensus on what plural qualities constitute capital Q Quality self-contradictory and ultimately less productive. Lastly, it suggests that suzhi may be better understood as an ever-ongoing project of meaning making that aims to form a body of knowledge in China's exploration of new paradigms of governance.

Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 206 , June 2011 , pp. 313 - 330
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Murphy, Rachel, “Turning peasants into modern Chinese citizens: ‘population quality’ discourse, demographic transition and primary education,” The China Quarterly, No. 177 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 From Michel Foucault, cited in Woronov, T. E., “Governing China's children: governmentality and ‘education for quality’,” Positions, Vol. 17, No. 3 (2009), p. 569CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 For example, Anagnost, Ann, “The corporeal politics of quality (suzhi),” Public Culture, Vol.16, No. 2 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harvey, David, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Ong, Aihwa, Buddha Is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Hairong, Yan, “Neoliberal governmentality and neohumanism: organizing suzhi/value flow through labor recruitment networks,” Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 18, No. 4 (2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 For instance, Kipnis, Andrew, “Neoliberalism reified: suzhi discourse and tropes of neoliberalism in the People's Republic of China,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, No. 13 (2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kipnis, Andrew, “Audit culture: neoliberal governmentality, socialist legacy, or technologies of governing?” American Ethnologist, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nonini, Donald M., “Is China becoming neoliberal?” Critique of Anthropology, Vol. 28, No. 2 (2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Nonini, “Is China becoming neoliberal?” p. 145; Pieke, Frank N., “The production of rulers: Communist Party schools and the transition to neo-socialism in contemporary China,” Social Anthropology, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Kipnis, “Audit culture,” pp. 284, 283, 282.

7 Anagnost, “The corporeal politics of quality (suzhi)”; Dickson, Bruce J., “Integrating wealth and power in China: the Communist Party's embrace of the private sector,” The China Quarterly, No. 192 (2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Murphy, “Turning peasants into modern Chinese citizens”; Nonini, “Is China becoming neoliberal?”; Pieke, “The production of rulers”; Tomba, Luigi, “Of quality, harmony, and community: civilization and the middle class in urban China,” Positions, No. 17 (2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yan Hairong, “Neoliberal governmentality and neohumanism.”

8 Kipnis, Andrew, “Suzhi: a keyword approach,” The China Quarterly, No. 186 (2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kipnis, “Neoliberalism reified.”

9 Brownell, Susan, “Beijing's Olympic education programme: re-thinking suzhi education, re-imaging an international China,” The China Quarterly, No. 197 (2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kipnis, Andrew, “The disturbing educational discipline of ‘peasants’,” The China Journal, No. 46 (2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Murphy, “Turning peasants into modern Chinese citizens”; Woronov, T. E., “In the eye of the chicken: hierarchy and marginality among Beijing's migrant schoolchildren,” Ethnography, No. 5 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yi, Lin, Cultural Exclusion in China: State Education, Social Mobility and Cultural Difference (London: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar.

10 Woronov, “Governing China's children,” p. 585.

11 For a recent study of the operations of the hukou system in China historically and in light of recent reforms, see Chan, K. and Buckingham, W., “Is China abolishing the hukou system?” The China Quarterly, No. 195 (2008), pp. 582–606Google Scholar.

12 In the fifth census in 2000, migrant children of compulsory education age (below 14) accounted for 71% of all migrant children, See China National Institute of Educational Research, The Education of Rural-Urban Migrant Children: Policy Analysis and Suggestions, http://www.cnier.ac.cn/snxx/baogao/snxx_20081010101631_6157.html, accessed 10 April 2009.

13 Research Group of “New Citizen School” Project, “A report of the feasibility of ‘new citizen school’ project” (2007), http://www.naradafoundation.org/xiangmujieshao.asp?cc=3, accessed 1 May 2009.

14 See http://www.moe.edu.cn/edoas/website18/43/info143.htm, accessed 30 April 2009.

15 Compiling Committee of Yearbook of Xiamen SEZ, Yearbook of Xiamen Special Economic Zone 2008 (2008), http://www.stats-xm.gov.cn/tjxx/tqnj/2008/main0.htm, accessed 5 May 2009.

16 Information in this paragraph is obtained from http://www.xm.gov.cn/zmhd/ldft/zxxzsgz/xgbd/200708/t20070830_174835.htm; http://www.xmedu.gov.cn/publish/publish/XmlFile/swsl/W_1115_7586.html; http://www.xiamen.cn/wsbs/bjsswsb/jy/wlwg/200709/P020070925461189371470.doc; and Xiamen Government Office, “Ideas of further carrying out the work of the compulsory education of rural migrant children” (2006), accessed 5 May 2009.

17 Xiamen Education Bureau, “A notice on further standardization of the work of rural migrant children's entrance into schools” (2007), http://www.xmedu.gov.cn/publish/publish/XmlFile/idc/W_1982_7960.html, accessed 6 May 2009.

18 This policy also means that public schools must take all school-aged children within its administrative area before it is allowed to enrol students from other areas.

19 Also see Chan and Buckingham, “Is China abolishing the hukou system?”

20 Kipnis, “The disturbing educational discipline of ‘peasants’,” p. 10.

21 Peiyang rather than jiaoyu (education) is a preferred vernacular expression among governments, schoolteachers and the public, and thus its English translation “cultivation” is used in this article to show its ideological tone.

22 Ministry of Education, “2001–2010, objectives of the national curriculum reform of basic education,” http://www.jyb.cn/gb/2001/10/24/jcjy/jxgg/1.htm, accessed 6 May 2009.

23 Kipnis similarly argues that, in post-Mao China, the low quality of an individual is not only associated with notions of social class that is often directed against “uncultured” people such as peasants, but also referred to the lack of creativity or well-rounded personality` (“The disturbing educational discipline of ‘peasants’,” p.11).

24 Murphy, “Turning peasants into modern Chinese citizens,” p. 2. Also see Brownell, “Beijing's Olympic education programme,” pp. 44–45, and Woronov, “Governing China's children,” pp. 571–72, for the information of the emergence of suzhi jiaoyu.

25 Hargreaves, A., “Four ages of professionalism and professional learning,” in Lauder, H. et al. (eds.), Education, Globalization & Social Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006 [2000]), p. 677Google Scholar.

26 On the hard living conditions of generally rural migrant families and their high aspiration for the future through education, see China National Institute of Educational Research, The Education of Rural-Urban Migrant Children.

27 Kipnis has a similar observation in his illustration of variations in educational success of students with either a rural or an entrepreneurial background (“The disturbing educational discipline of ‘peasants’,” pp. 8–10). However, he has failed to point out that it was not so much hardship or guaranteed material wellbeing per se, but a frame of reference that largely determined students’ motivation for study.

28 Xiamen as a whole had long been a rural area of primarily fishing or farming, and did not become prosperous until it was granted SEZ status.

29 According to my survey, there are about 600 books or articles between 1983 and 2009 with “human modernization” in their title. A major argument in this body of literature is around “(small) peasant thinking” that is said to hamper China from modernization.

30 Hargreaves, “Four ages of professionalism and professional learning,” p. 683.

31 Anagnost, “The corporeal politics of quality (suzhi),” p. 204; Spivak, Gayatri, “Scattered speculations on the question of value,” Diacritics, Vol. 15, No. 4 (1985), p. 73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yan Hairong, “Neoliberal governmentality and neohumanism,” p. 500.

32 Kipnis, “Suzhi: a keyword approach,” p. 304.

33 Ibid.

34 Also see ibid.; Brownell, “Beijing's Olympic education programme”; and Murphy, “Turning peasants into modern Chinese citizens.”

35 However, this was an inaccurate impression by the administrator, which more serves to show how a Chinese educator perceives “Chinese race” in a way that echoes the longstanding discourse of “racial improvement” throughout modern Chinese history (see below).

36 Kipnis, “Suzhi: a keyword approach,” pp. 305–06.

37 See Culp, R., “Rethinking governmentality: training, cultivation, and cultural citizenship in Nationalist China,” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 65, No. 3 (2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Gladney, Dru C., “Making Muslims in China: education, Islamicization and representation,” in Postiglione, G. A. (ed.), China's National Minority Education: Culture, Schooling, and Development (New York: Falmer Press, 1999), p. 59Google Scholar.

39 See “Reading the Confucian classics becomes popular with children in China,” http://news.creaders.net/headline/newsPooL/7A220928.html, accessed 8 November 2004; also see “Shaonan wenhua dujing jiaoyu wang,” http://www.dujing.org/CLCms/Article/Index.asp, accessed 6 February 2010.

40 Kipnis, “Suzhi: a keyword approach” captures this cultivation propensity in the Harvard Girl, Liu Yiting.

41 See Culp, “Rethinking governmentality” for a similar case in Republican China.

42 Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Penguin Books, 1975)Google Scholar.

43 Woronov, “Governing China's children,” p. 576. Chiang Kai-shek delivered an almost identical speech regarding student cultivation in the mid-1930s. See Culp, “Rethinking governmentality,” p. 529.

44 Ibid.

45 Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Random House, 1970)Google Scholar.

46 This idea originates in a famous passage in the Confucian classic Daxue (Great Learning). See Legge, James (trans.), The Four Books (Sishu) (in Chinese and English) (Taipei: Wenhua tushu gongsi, 1983)Google Scholar, cited in Bakken, B., The Exemplary Society: Human Improvement, Social Control, and the Dangers of Modernity in China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 42Google Scholar.

47 See e.g. Kipnis, “Neoliberalism reified”; Nonini, “Is China becoming neoliberal?”

48 Woronov, “Governing China's children,” p. 578.

49 Downey, D. B. et al. “Are ‘failing’ schools really failing? Using seasonal comparison to evaluate school effectiveness,” Sociology of Education, Vol. 81, No. 3 (2008), pp. 242–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Ibid.

51 Woronov, “Governing China's children,” p. 585.

52 Dickson, “Integrating wealth and power in China”; Nonini, “Is China becoming neoliberal?”; Pieke, “The production of rulers.”