Education and Upward Social Mobility 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.

Jin Jin is Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Administration at East China Normal University. Her research expertise is sociology of education and policy sociology.

1. Is it possible to transcend class domination? 2. Against Bourdieu? Habitus as a (re)imagination for emancipation 3. From a sociology of domination to a sociology of emancipation 4. Living with two worlds: identification, disidentification, and reconciliation 5. Becoming 'exceptions': lights and shadows of meritocracy 6. Beyond 'exceptions': possibilities and boundaries of self-transformation 7. Can we transcend class domination?