Shifting discourses from boy preference to boy crisis: educating boys and nation building in neoliberal China

Lin, Xiaodong and Mac an Ghaill, Mairtin (2017) Shifting discourses from boy preference to boy crisis: educating boys and nation building in neoliberal China. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. ISSN 0159-6306

[img]
Preview
Text
NU0020.pdf - Accepted Version

Download (265kB) | Preview

Abstract

It is well established that China has emerged as a major economic power, resulting from the nation’s neoliberal modernisation. What is less understood is the socio-cultural and educational impact of this change on public institutions. This article focuses on the education system, which is currently seen as central to delivering the nation’s modernisation project, particularly through suzhi jiaoyu (education for quality). More specifically, we engage with a pervasive public discourse of a boy crisis. We suggest the need critically to explore the local (national) meanings within a contemporary Chinese context of this assumed projected crisis that appears to be established as a western phenomenon. We argue that the discourse of a boy crisis can be read as a strategic move to re-inscribe an earlier discourse, that of the boy preference, that in turn is discursively linked to nation building at a time of globally-inflected socio-economic transformations.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education on 10 April 2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/01596306.2017.1312284 .
Divisions: Faculty of Education > Department of Education, Multi-professional Practice and Early Childhood
Depositing User: Jane Faux
Date Deposited: 27 Mar 2017 14:38
Last Modified: 10 Oct 2018 05:10
URI: https://newman.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/15522

Actions (login required)

Edit Item Edit Item