Institutional Habitus, State identity, and China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Foreign ministries play a critical role in international relations and are the main interface of diplomacy. Yet, in international relations scholarship, foreign ministries are relatively neglected as an object of scholarly analysis and feature very little around discussions of state's agency and identity. Using China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) as a foil, I suggest that foreign ministries develop dispositions, perceive the social world around them, and react to the world from these orientations. The implication of this, then, are that foreign ministries are contributive to a state's identity and “actorness.” In that way, I develop the concept of institutional habitus to understand China's MOFA and the ways in which this habitus is sustained and performed through MOFA's physical artefacts and its agents. This rendering of habitus responds to sociology's invitation to extend Bourdieu-inspired analysis toward organizations and organizational change and, more broadly, complements existing theorization of state identity by showcasing an important but omitted source of identity: the foreign ministry. I argue that China's MOFA's organizational habitus manifests and preserves itself through three means: first, through the iterative reinscription of institutional memory and invocation of history; second, through displays of fealty; and third, in organizational and personal self-regulation, discipline, and taciturnity.

Reconsidering Organizational Habitus in Schools: One Neighborhood, Two Distinct Approaches to Advanced Placement

Rigorous learning opportunities at high schools in low-income neighborhoods are limited and ineffective, and in these settings the Advanced Placement (AP) program has mostly eluded successful implementation. In this study, Suneal Kolluri analyzes two schools in the same low-income, Latinx neighborhood that, despite comparable numerical gains, have adopted very different approaches to AP. One school emphasizes competition and dominant cultural norms, while the other stresses collectivism and community cultural wealth. This analysis elaborates the theory of organizational habitus to suggest that schools can look beyond local postsecondary opportunity structures when designing policies and curricula. Ultimately, Kolluri argues, a school's organizational habitus will profoundly impact how students engage with AP classes.

Contrastación de un modelo de cultura organizacional en Universidades Públicas del Centro de México.

Resumen.-Grosso modo, la cultura organizacional ha sido definida en referencia a un conjunto de normas y valores, usos y costumbres en torno a un estilo de dirección tradicional, liderazgo unidireccional y clima de relaciones verticales. A partir de este modelo, nuevas culturas alternativas emergieron en respuesta al autoritarismo organizacional, pero la diversidad de propuestas ha generado factores e indicadores no siempre compatibles con las contingencias del entorno organizacional. El objetivo del presente trabajo es contrastar las trayectorias de relaciones de dependencia entre las variables que configuran la cultura organizacional en Instituciones de Educación Superior (IES) del centro de México. Se realizó un estudio transversal y exploratorio con una selección de 320 estudiantes, docentes y administrativos. Los resultados advierten la prevalencia de cuatro factores, tres los cuales se modelaron para predecir el habitus organizacional. Se advierten líneas de investigación relativas a las redes de conocimiento como factores que no sólo determinen la dinámica organizacional sino, además la transformen. Palabras clave: Cultura, modelo, hipermetropía, habitus, indefensión, gobernanza Contrastation of a model of organizational culture in Public Universities of the center of Mexico Abstract.-Roughly, the organizational culture has been defined in reference to a set of norms and values, uses and customs around a traditional style of leadership, unidirectional leadership and climate of vertical relations. From this model, new alternative cultures emerged in response to organizational authoritarianism, but the diversity of proposals has generated factors and indicators that are not always compatible with the contingencies of the organizational environment. The objective of the present work is to compare the trajectories of dependency relations among the variables that make up the organizational culture in Institutions of Higher Education (IES) in central Mexico. A transversal and exploratory study was carried out with a selection of 320 students, teachers and administrators. The results indicate the prevalence of four factors, three of which were modeled to predict the organizational habitus. Lines of research related to knowledge networks are seen as factors that not only determine the organizational dynamics but also transform it. Keywords: Culture, model, hypermetropy, habitus, defenselessness, governance