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

2021 ◽  
pp. 144078332110386
Author(s):  
Jiexiu Chen
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Rural Students ◽  
Social Milieu ◽  
Urban University ◽  
Effective Generation ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Embodied Capital ◽  
Transforming Practices

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.

scholarly journals Hysteresis Effects and Emotional Suffering: Chinese Rural Students’ First Encounters With the Urban University

2020 ◽  
pp. 136078042094988
Author(s):  
Jiexiu Chen
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Education System ◽  
Rural Students ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Emotional Suffering ◽  
Urban University ◽  
Students First ◽  
Urban Rural

In the Chinese context of a stratified higher education system and significant urban–rural inequality, rural students are generally facing constrained possibilities for social mobility through higher education. Despite these structural constraints, some exceptional rural students, like all the participants in this research, manage to get themselves enrolled in the urban university. Drawing on participants’ subjective narratives about their first encounters in the urban university, I argue that the rural students in this research were confronted with two levels of habitus–field disjunctures, namely, the rural–urban disjuncture and academic disjuncture. Then, through examining participants’ narratives about their hysteresis effects and emotional suffering, I suggest the sense of feeling lost and inferior reveals how various types of domination in the external structure of the field of the urban university play a part in affecting rural students’ inner emotional worlds.

scholarly journals The Expansion Mechanism of Rural Residential Land and Implications for Sustainable Regional Development: Evidence from the Baota District in China’s Loess Plateau

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 172
Author(s):  
Zongfeng Chen ◽  
Xueqi Liu ◽  
Zhi Lu ◽  
Yurui Li
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Binary Logistic Regression ◽  
Residential Land ◽  
Protection Measures ◽  
Ecological Protection ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Sustainable Regional Development ◽  
Agricultural Areas ◽  
Rural Residential Land

Rural residential land is the main space of a farmer’s life, rural culture, and social relations. Prior research of rural residential land has focused more on its evolvement in plain and traditional agricultural areas. Yet, there is no clear picture of rural residential land expansion, especially in ecologically fragile areas. This study analyzed the characteristics of rural residential land expansion based on 30 m spatial resolution land-use datasets of the Baota District of Yan’an City, Shannxi Province, and further explored the influencing factors and mechanisms of rural residential land expansion through binary logistic regression (BLR) modeling. Our findings indicated that the area of rural residential land in the Baota District increased by 116.16% during 1990–2015. More than 75% of the residential land expansion came from the occupation of cropland. Moreover, rural residential land expansion was heterogeneous in the rural regional system. The expansion scale, speed, and mode diversity of rural residential land decreased with the increased distance to urban built-up areas. Geographical conditions and resource endowments are the primary internal driving factors; urbanization and policy implementation are two major external driving forces. The authors suggest that the realization of regional sustainable development in ecologically fragile areas should strengthen urban–rural integration, focus on constructing central towns, and ensure ecological protection measures.

Contending the Rural: Food Commodities and Regimes of Value in Contemporary China

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 42-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sacha Cody
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Work Experiences ◽  
Rural Labor ◽  
Alternative Food Movement ◽  
The Social ◽  
Organic Farmers ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Food Commodities ◽  
China Today

This article examines how commodity status is achieved and how value is articulated across three food provisioning practices and ideologies in China: nationally certified food, local government-sponsored organic food near Shanghai, and an alternative food movement comprising small-scale and independent organic farmers in Shanghai and the surrounding countryside. Understanding value across these three cases requires asking how the social relations of production and the rural labor involved in domestic food production are rendered visible, or not, to urban shoppers. Drawing on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork as well as on work experiences with transnational food corporations in China, this article illustrates that government initiatives alienate rural labor in an effort partially designed to manage social harmony, while independent organic farmers “bring the rural back.” This analysis adds to our understanding of urban/rural relations in China today. It also shows that for alternative notions of value to flourish, gifts may intentionally moonlight as commodities.

scholarly journals PERUBAHAN SOSIAL BUDAYA MASYARAKAT PEDESAAN PASCA REVOLUSI HIJAU

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-93
Author(s):  
Adam Saleh
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Green Revolution ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Rural Life ◽  
Rural People ◽  
Industrial Transformation ◽  
Rural And Urban Areas

It is assumed that changes in village community will become even clearer if related to changes in village society at this time. Changes in society will look good in the fields of education, economics, social relations and other fields. Modernization is a change in society that moves from traditional conditions or from pre-modern society to modern society. The process of change was driven by various community efforts in fighting for their hopes and ideals, namely changing lives and existing livelihoods for the better. General characteristics of modernization are related to the fields of social social traditions, population science and technology and social mobility. The various fields are proceeding so as to achieve new patterns of behavior that are manifested in the life of modern society. Major changes that have taken place since the post-green revolution, villages in Southeast Asia have undergone fundamental changes. Rural life and the fulfillment of the needs of life of rural people in Southeast Asia have undergone a fundamental change, can no longer assume that the fulfillment of rural life needs are obtained from agriculture, nor can it assume that rural people face and expect their future in the field agriculture, these events affect each other or the interconnection between rural and urban areas, such as increased movement of rural people to cities or vice versa (urbanization and migration), the shift from agriculture to non-agriculture (agrarian-industrial transformation), as well as increased aspirations and education (social mobility Another thing that seems to change is lifestyle in the form of material, in this case related to household appliances, vehicles and communication tools.

scholarly journals Conversion as Negotiation. Converts as Actors of Civil Society

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 322
Author(s):  
Katrin Langewiesche
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Power Conversion ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Religious Values ◽  
Civil Society Organization ◽  
Social Commitment ◽  
Personal Belief

This article focuses on the religious movement of the Ahmadiyya and its civil society organization, Humanity First, in West-Africa and in Europe. Particular attention is paid to the place of converts within these two institutions. Conversions to an Islamic minority and the actions of this minority are studied through the prism of social commitment. I examine the intersections between religious values, the ideas of solidarity in the societies under scrutiny and, the kaleidoscopic range of Muslim charities. The paper investigates conversion as negotiation in regard to gender, social mobility, and power. Conversion is approached here as a matter of social relations and not personal belief. I argue that converts have to use various strategies of recognition, either as individuals or as a group, which places them in a permanent state of negotiation with their entourage.

scholarly journals Research on the Influence of Urban-rural Dual Structure on the Social Mobility Function of Rural Education — Based on the Empirical Investigation of the Loss of Rural Junior High School Students in S City, Hubei Province

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miao Li
Keyword(s):  
Rural Education ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Junior High School ◽  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
School Students ◽  
Dual Structure ◽  
Mobility Function ◽  
The Social ◽  
Urban Rural

Based on the empirical investigation of the loss of rural junior high school students in S City, Hubei Province, this article explores the weakening of the social mobility function of rural education under the dual structure of urban and rural areas, and points out the deep-seated reasons — the urban-centric orientation of the national education system under the dual urban-rural structure. At the same time, the article reveals the harm of the weakening of the social mobility function of rural education under the urban-rural dual structure.

scholarly journals Cracking IT: Negotiating Working-Class Gender Capital through Group Enterprises in India

2021 ◽  
pp. 095001702110549
Author(s):  
Shoba Arun ◽  
Thankom Arun
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Digital Work ◽  
Working Practices ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Capital ◽  
Group Enterprises

Digital work is often associated with higher levels of earning and increased social mobility. Working in the digital economy will not benefit all women equally or act as an enabler of broader social change. The article draws attention to the intersection of gender and class in work in the information technology (IT) sector of India, where women have increased their visibility and participation. Through a gender capital approach and intersectional analyses, the article points to the incontrovertible impact of class and gender when women from low-income backgrounds engage in IT-based group enterprises in the state of Kerala. A central insight from the study is the need to disaggregate types of IT work as women’s experiences in IT are shaped by the simultaneity of working practices, intersectional inequalities and gendered behaviours, often with limits to gender capital and spill-over impact on broader gender and social relations.

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