Dongshi as reflexive habitus to understand Chinese rural students’ academic success

ABSTRACT This article uses a Chinese notion, dongshi, to understand Chinese rural students’ academic success in terms of accessing elite universities. Dongshi is defined as reflexive habitus informed by Bourdieu’s notions of field, capital and habitus. Through a qualitative study of a group of rural students’ pre-university life stories, dongshi emerges from the data, which alludes to four facets of reflexivity: (1) empathetic understanding of their parents’ hardships in supporting their education; (2) their parents’ powerlessness in educational involvement; (3) the significance of knowledge in changing destinies; and (4) expectations of repaying their parents. As reflexive habitus, dongshi echoes the transformative aspect of habitus, contributing to rural students’ access to elite universities. This article contributes to the constructive dialogue with Bourdieu in Chinese sociology of education and calls for global researchers to reflect on the theoretical resources available in their linguistic repertoire when contextualising Bourdieu.