Abstract
This chapter is an ethnography of a psychosocial experience of the PRC scholars revolving around the notion of being “very China,” an idiom that captures the intertwinement between their development of self-consciousness and their identity transformation. Indexing the undesirable embodied differences as well as educational subjectivities that some PRC scholars critically discover about themselves upon being reflected through the otherness of the local/Singaporean figure, “very China”-ness is a transient identity label, the negation of which marks the PRC scholars’ subjective expansion. Not only is this drama of “very China”-ness played out in the local-foreign relation, it also manifests in the “intra-ethnic othering” between the SM1/2/3 scholars. This chapter is a case of how exactly subjective transformations take place among international students.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Abelmann, N. (2009). The intimate university: Korean American students and the problems of segregation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Davie, S. (2014, October 2). Singapore may rue fall in foreign students numbers. Retrieved April 17, 2016, from http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/singapore-may-rue-fall-in-foreign-student-numbers
Gu, Q. (2011). An emotional journey of change: The case of Chinese students in UK higher education. In L. Jin & M. Cortazzi (Eds.), Researching Chinese learners—Skills, perceptions and intercultural adaptations (pp. 212–232). Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hall, S. (1997). The local and the global: Globalization and ethnicity. In A. King (Ed.), Culture, globalization and the world-system. Contemporary conditions for the reproduction of identity (pp. 19–40). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Koh, A. (2003). Global flows of foreign talent: Identity anxieties in Singapore’s ethnoscape. SOJOURN, 18(2), 230–256.
Longhurst, R. (2005). The body. In D. Atkinson, P. Jackson, D. Sibley, & N. Washbourne (Eds.), Cultural geography: A critical dictionary of key concepts (pp. 91–96). London: I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd.
Marginson, S. (2014). Student self-formation in international education. Journal of Studies in International Education, 18(1), 6–22.
Ricoeur, P. (1992). Oneself as another (K. Blamey, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Robertson, S. (2013a). Campus, city, networks and nation: Student-migrant activism as socio-spatial experience in Melbourne, Australia. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37(3), 972–988.
Wu, J., & Singh, M. (2004). ‘Wishing for dragon children’: Ironies and contradictions in China’s education reform and the Chinese diaspora’s disappointments with Australian education. The Australian Educational Researcher, 31(2), 29–44.
Yovel, Y. (2005). Hegel’s preface to the phenomenology of spirit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Yu, L., & Suen, H. K. (2005). Historical and contemporary exam-driven education fever in China. KEDI Journal of Educational Policy, 2(1), 17–33.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Yang, P. (2016). Being “Very China:” Self-Consciousness and Identity Transformation. In: International Mobility and Educational Desire. Anthropological Studies of Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59143-2_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59143-2_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-59142-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-59143-2
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)