Cultural Exclusion in China

State Education, Social Mobility and Cultural Difference

Lin Yi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781134048823
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Ethnic minorities form a very substantial proportion of the population of China, with over 100 million people in 55 formally designated minority groups inhabiting over 60% of the country's land area. Poverty and economic inequality of minority groups are widely-recognised problems. However, as this book, based on extensive original research, shows, underlying economic inequality are educational inequality and cultural exclusion, which in turn lead to problems of social mobility and thereby to poverty. The book examines in particular Tibetan, Muslim Hui, Salar and Bonan people. It discusses the policy and practice of education for ethnic minorities, the prevailing chauvinistic Chinese national culture, from which minorities feel excluded, and the attitudes of both majority Han Chinese towards minorities, and of minorities towards their position of cultural exclusion. Besides exploring the forms of cultural exclusion experienced by ethnic minorities, it considers what might be done to promote inclusion, proposing a rethinking of the project of nation building and modernisation of state and minority rights in order to achieve the goal of including the minority population of distinctive cultures into wider society.

1 Introduction

Why do many ethnic minority communities persistently perform poorly in schooling? Why is it that some minority members cannot achieve social mobility as much as they should in accordance with their achievement in education?

The research presented here explores what lies behind the failure of ethnic minorities in the educational system and in social mobility, in a knowledge-economy-driven world in which education is a major route to social mobility. It is concerned primarily with an examination of the relationship between ethnicity and educational performance. This book argues that the failure to achieve inclusion of ethnic minorities of distinctive cultures is largely responsible for poor minority performance in education and social mobility; that is, cultural exclusion perpetuates ethnic minority inequality.

This book examines the forms of cultural exclusion experienced by ethnic minorities in the Chinese education system, and considers what might promote their inclusion. This introductory chapter delineates the ways in which cultural exclusion creates inequalities for (particularly) ethnically disadvantaged groups. It begins with an examination of the factors influencing educational achievement among ethnic minorities. These tendencies are examined by referencing four theoretical frameworks: the social system and community forces, cultural capital, social capital and multiculturalism. Following these discussions, I argue that the theorization of (ethnic) social mobility and equality requires an holistic approach to the socio-cultural context. That is, the extent to which a community with a distinctive culture is recognized by the wider society directly affects their social mobility and position within that society.

Ethnicity and educational achievement

Standardized public education is widely acknowledged as being essential for citizens to gain equal opportunity to access mainstream institutions (Kymlicka 2001: 20), so as to facilitate opportunities for upward social mobility. This idea of equality makes demands in the first place for the equal achievement of students from different backgrounds in education. However, unequal school performance is often closely associated with differences in ethnicity in that some ethnic groups tend to outperform others,¹ as illustrated by data from China as well as the UK and USA.²

Kao and Thompson (2003) suggest that three theoretical approaches pervade debates on minority school performanc: namely, cultural orientations of certain ethnic groups that promote or discourage academic achievement; the structural position of ethnic groups that affects the environments of children, parents or schools; and genetic differences. The last approach is largely dismissed in academic discussions today for its racist overtones and the lack of empirical evidence (Kao and Thompson 2003: 419–20). Most academic discussions focus on the interplay of the other two approaches: cultural orientations and the structural position. Notably, some theoretical arguments fall between the two perspectives. Whilst the cultural orientations thesis is directed at the cultural norms of ethnic groups, that of the structural position largely focuses on parental socio-economic status (SES), which is connected with parental participation, quality of instruction, school peers, teachers and other influences.

In his analysis of the persistence of low educational performance of black people in the USA, Ferguson (2005) subtly and convincingly relates socio-economic to cultural factors. He argues there have long existed differences in the ways in which the ethnic majority and minority (for Ferguson, whites and blacks) have coped with and adapted to their positions in the nation’s hierarchy of power and privilege, which reflect psychological self-defence mechanisms, social interaction patterns and disparities in access to opportunities. Such patterns help determine ‘the economic wherewithal of families to provide for their children, the child-rearing methods that families grow accustomed to using and the ways that they understand and interact with mainstream institutions such as schools’ (Ferguson 2005: 316). In a word, the minority socio-economic status is largely associated with race or ethnicity that is socially constructed. This race- or ethnicity-rooted disparity is likely to lead to, for example, the differences in parenting that supposedly prepare minority children for different cognitive or learning styles, on the one hand (Blair 2001; Osborne 2001), and on the other, do not prepare minority children with the necessary knowledge bases before schooling (Ferguson 2005). As a result, minority students appear to have difficulties in understanding what is being taught in schools. In a nutshell, these kinds of pre-school parenting practices result in minority children’s under-preparation in skills and knowledge that are needed in formal education (Ferguson 2005).

Ferguson’s analysis of the relationship between socio-economic status and cultural factors resonates with John Ogbu’s concept of ‘community forces’; that is, distinctive minorities foster different cultural models in response to the system or the dominant group’s treatment of them (Ogbu 1987; Ogbu and Simons 1998). Such an interactive perspective allows Ogbu to explain why some minority groups have the motivation to perform well (voluntary minorities) while others show resistance or reluctance in school study (involuntary minorities). This classification is justified by Ogbu through providing four distinguishable types of cultural model of ethnic minorities (Ogbu and Simons 1998: 169–76): frames of reference, instrumental responses or folk theories of ‘making it’, degree of trust in dominant (for Ogbu, white) people and their institutions, and finally, beliefs about the effect of adopting the mainstream (white) ways on minority identity.

Here, Ogbu primarily looks at two dimensions that together lead various minority groups to differing interpretations of and responses to the mainstream group: economic aspirations and the cultural concern. Both of these are significantly informed and shaped by their relationship with the dominant group. This allows for an understanding of minorities’ responses both instrumentally and symbolically, and more importantly, of the dilemma and possibility of reconciliation between an expectation for economic success and a desire for cultural well-being. Therefore, the underlying question in Ogbu’s approach is: whether or not it is possible to achieve upward social mobility through education and at the same time to maintain a distinctive cultural identity.

However, in explaining minority performance, Ogbu’s concept of voluntary and involuntary minorities can be said to be in many cases somewhat misleading, including Ogbu’s own cases, as other scholars have criticized (for example, Margaret A. Gibson et al. 1997). More importantly, the association of certain minorities with certain types of response and behaviour can imply that they are responsible for their disadvantaged status and lead to further stereotyping (Gillborn 1997). This is primarily because of Ogbu’s failure to recognize the responsibilities the social system has for minority performance in schools. Therefore, his distinction between voluntary and involuntary minorities is not employed in this study. Nonetheless, the system and community forces distinction has heuristic value as a conceptual framework based on power relations between different social forces (in spite of the fact that to neglect the system quite often leads Ogbu to diverging from the underlying concept of his framework, power relations) (also see Navarro 1997 and van Zanten 1997). Correspondingly, methodologically Ogbu’s thesis provides a useful conceptual framework, incorporating both macro-level and micro-level analyses, for the empirical study of the relationship between ethnicity and school performance. My empirical studies adopt his framework. This adoption modifies his ‘the (social) system’ as ‘social systems’ (plural) to show that the system is not always a coherent whole but diverse.

Educational achievement, cultural capital and social capital

By highlighting community forces, Ogbu shows that cultural and linguistic difference explanations put forward by some educational anthropologists in the USA do not adequately account for the differences in school performance amongst some minorities. Nevertheless, cultural discontinuity between home and school clearly does cause learning problems (Erickson 1987; Ogbu and Simons 1998: 161). In fact, it is not easy to distinguish between the two cultural themes of community forces and cultural difference. That is to say, when cultural values and norms of minority communities positively or negatively affect their children’s educational performance, they are undoubtedly functioning as ‘forces’. In this sense, it is more appropriate to see cultural difference as part of community forces, or cultural orientations, thereby expanding its theoretical implications.

In this way, cultural sociology – unlike conventional anthropology – suggests an understanding of culture that does not fix the attributes of entire groups and societies. Nor does it merely refer to ‘an ideally purer realm of art and morality expressing higher human capabilities and values’, an idea that emerged in the course of the Industrial Revolution in England (Spillman 2002: 3). Instead, as Spillman points out, cultural sociology entails analysis of the effects of meaning-making processes in social life. To understand culture in this way is to consider cultural norms and cultural relationships simultaneously. I will return to discuss this at length in dealing with the interrelations between capital, culture and power relations later on in this chapter.

Given these considerations it is difficult to assess what factors, community forces or cultural differences, are more significant in minority school performance. However, Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital provides support for cultural discontinuity explanations due to its emphasis upon processes of meaning-making in social life. In analysing the educational achievement gap between different classes, Bourdieu explains that distinctive class groups possess differential cultural heritages, some of which are more likely than others to be transformed into cultural capital (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977; Bourdieu 1986).

Cultural capital, according to Bourdieu, takes three forms: embodied, objectified and institutionalized. Its embodied form refers to the domestic transmission of cultural heritage. This is ‘the best hidden and socially most determinant educational investment’ (Bourdieu 1986: 48).³ Its objectified state is observable in the form of cultural goods such as pictures, books, instruments, machines, etc. Its institutionalized form is most significantly embodied in academic qualifications or ‘credentialization’. That is, the embodiment of a particular culture rather than others is recognized and reproduced through the educational system. This institutionalization has the crucial effect of guaranteeing the monetary value of a given academic qualification. In this way, it ultimately converts culture into economic value.

It is cultural capital that causes divergence between the academic achievements of students from different cultural groups and, further, leads the intergenerational reproduction of this educational pattern. In terms of class disparity, this endowment is associated with ownership by the higher class of ‘highbrow’ culture and language. The possession of highbrow culture and language confers dominance as this culture and language are institutionalized through the education system. In turn, the possession of cultural capital by higher class children appears as ‘merit’ in schooling. In such circumstances, while the education system presupposes equal possession of cultural capital for credentialization in school, lower class students are placed in a disadvantaged position due to their lack of cultural capital or ‘merit’, simply because they are from a relatively ‘lowbrow’ culture.

This educational or institutional system enables the higher class to maintain its dominant position by legitimating the normative status and reproduction of its cultural heritage. Moreover, the success in schooling of some individuals from the lower class also helps to strengthen the educational system by legitimizing the ‘meritocracy’ of the dominant culture. This is apparently applicable to ethnicity and education as the anthropologists of cultural discontinuity demonstrate. The theory has been applied to studies of school performance focusing on ethnicity or racial difference (see for instance, Kalmijn and Kraaykamp 1996; Lareau and Horvat 1999; Olneck 2000).

Ogbu’s approach to community forces is, in some way, transcended by some other research in which the community can be seen to have been mobilized as an active, intentionally organized social network in helping their (younger) members to achieve upward social mobility through education (Zhou 2005). In Zhou’s research, the Chinese ethnic community in the US are not seen as playing a passive or invisible role in relation to social systems, contrary to Bourdieu’s class-based theory; nor, as Ogbu suggests, do they merely employ an ‘opt-in’ or ‘opt-out’ strategy based on their perceptions of the treatment they have received from the system, aiming either to fit into social systems or to reject it. In fact, the marginalized community, as Zhou illustrates, can play a significant role in the attempt to actively participate in (mainstream) social systems through becoming a ‘Do It Yourself’ actor in the first instance.

Zhou’s approach brings to our attention the concept of social capital. Unlike cultural and economic capital, ‘social capital inheres in the structure of relations between actors and among actors’ (Coleman 1988: S98). As Robert Putnam states, it encompasses ‘social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them’ (2000: 19). Meanwhile, social capital is ‘the collectivity-owned capital’, which is ‘a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition’ (Bourdieu 1986: 51). Put simply, social capital is a network of connections characterized by mutual knowledge and recognition of its membership. This knowledge and recognition create, maintain and reinforce obligations and expectations between its members. By effectively mobilizing the network of relationships, social capital facilitates conversion from cultural capital to economic capital. By the same token, cultural and economic capitals also act as a basis to form social capital and further, add more value to it (Bourdieu 1986, Coleman 1988, Putnam 2000).⁴

However, an important distinction should be made between three types of social capital: bonding (exclusive), bridging (inclusive or horizontal) and linking (vertical) (Putnam 2000: 22–3, Woolcock 2001: 13).⁵ Bonding social capital refers to a social connection that tends to stress the identity of a group which is constituted in an inward and homogeneous way, and potentially excludes others who are external to it. In other words, it bolsters narrower selves and in-groups loyalty, and may also create out-group antagonism. Bridging social capital refers to a form of social networking that includes people across diverse social cleavages, and ‘can generate broader identities and reciprocity’ (Putnam 2000: 23). Linking social capital, unlike bridging capital that functions horizontally, connects groups or individuals to others in different social positions, for example, more powerful or socially advantaged, and hence refers to a vertical network. It is a linkage to formal institutions from which resources, ideas and information can be leveraged (NESF 2003). Furthermore, different combinations of bonding, bridging and linking social capital are responsible for the variety of outcomes of different cultural groups. In other words, whilst social capital can be mobilized to empower communities, it can also play a negative role. A similar distinction between negative and positive forms is also made by Zhou (2005) as two patterns of (inward) social capital, the ghetto (destructive) and the enclave (constructive), respectively.

Capital, culture and power relations

Whereas every community in theory possesses inward social capital, what makes communities distinctive in socio-economic status is dependent on how communities mobilize that capital. In the cases of dominant groups and dominated communities, the former are rarely in need of mobilization of their bonding capital while it is quite often the case with the latter, as Zhou illustrated in her Chinese community case. In other words, the fundamental difference between dominant groups and dominated communities in terms of social capital lies in whether or not a community needs to mobilize its bonding social capital. This need to mobilize inward capital is in fact a compensation for the lack of outward capital, bridging and/or linking. Therefore, the mobilization of bonding capital is a reflection of imbalanced power relations between the dominant group and dominated communities. Linking capital, as the public institution-related form of outward capital, is more responsible for the different roles distinctive communities play in power relations.

When a community predominantly possesses linking social capital, this means that it constitutes the core part of formal institutions, which ensures that it has substantial access to formal institutions. This will enable the community to become the legitimate player over other communities. In this condition, its inward social capital substantially overlaps with its linking social capital, and in mobilizing its linking capital in fact the community is also mobilizing its bonding capital. The two forms of capital are interlocked and sustain each other so that the dominant group does not particularly need to separately mobilize its bonding capital. One of the main results in playing this role is to institutionalize its own cultural heritage as capital, as Bourdieu observes. This is quite the reverse with dominated groups, who are deprived of outward social capital and have to rely on mobilizing inward social capital. This is why Bourdieuian theorists, unlike positivists who tend to take inward capital as an analytical basis, are more likely to pay close attention to outward capital in general, and linking or vertical capital in particular. As differential forms of social capital function differently depending on the socio-economic status of various communities, it is necessary to disaggregate the package of social capital, and at the same time to ensure that social capital is not reduced to solely one of its dimensions, inward capital.

The need and significance of unpacking but not reducing the thesis of social capital is fundamentally grounded in mutual knowledge and recognition within a community and between different communities. Whereas mutual knowledge and recognition are relatively easy to achieve within a cultural community, owing to shared cultural norms or values, they are not as easy to achieve between cultural communities. Dominated groups, in order t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of illustrations
• Chinese Pinyin
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The trajectories of Chinese culturalism and its educational legacy
• 3 Ethnicization through schooling: the mainstream discursive repertoires of ethnic minority cultures
• 4 Choosing between ‘ordinary’ and minorities: the Tibetan case
• 5 The social disengagement of ‘familiar strangers’: the Muslim case
• 6 Conclusion
• Postscript: promoting education by NGOs?
• Appendices
• Notes
• Bibliography