Doctoral theses at NTNU, 2018:152 Ida Marie Lyså Ida Marie Lyså Duties and Privileges An Ethnographic Study of Discipline as Doctoral thesis Doctoral Relational Practice in two Urban Chinese Kindergartens ISBN 978-82-326-3094-3 (printed ver.) ISBN 978-82-326-3095-0 (electronic ver.) ISSN 1503-8181 Doctoral theses at NTNU, 2018:152 Doctoral NTNU Philosophiae Doctor Philosophiae Thesis for the Degree of the Degree Thesis for Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences Sciences of Social and Educational Faculty Department of Education and Lifelong Learning and Lifelong Department of Education Norwegian University of Science and Technology of Science University Norwegian Ida Marie Lyså Duties and Privileges An Ethnographic Study of Discipline as Relational Practice in two Urban Chinese Kindergartens Thesis for the Degree of Philosophiae Doctor Trondheim, January 2018 Norwegian University of Science and Technology Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences Department of Education and Lifelong Learning NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology Thesis for the Degree of Philosophiae Doctor Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences Department of Education and Lifelong Learning © Ida Marie Lyså ISBN 978-82-326-3094-3 (printed ver.) ISBN 978-82-326-3095-0 (electronic ver.) ISSN 1503-8181 Doctoral theses at NTNU, 2018:152 Printed by NTNU Grafisk senter Acknowledgements I would like to spend this opportunity to thank the following people: First of all I would like to thank the children, parents, teachers and principals in the two Shanghainese kindergartens where I did fieldwork, for letting me to spend time with them, learn from and engage with them, through several months. Furthermore, I express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Associate Professor He Min at East China Normal University in Shanghai, for all her help throughout the fieldwork process. I would like to thank my supervisors: Professor Randi Dyblie Nilsen at Norwegian Centre for Child Research (NOSEB), Department of Education and Lifelong Learning (IPL), NTNU – and Professor Elin Eriksen Ødegaard at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (previously Bergen University College) – for all your help, guidance and support throughout these years. This project started out from Bergen where I was employed in the research group Barnehagen som Danningsarena (Kindergarten as an Arena for Cultural Formation), led by Professor Elin Eriksen Ødegaard and Professor Thorolf Krüger. I feel very fortunate to have been part of such a strong and supportive environment. I also want to thank Professors Tom Are Trippestad and Tiri Bergesen Schei and my fellow doctoral candidates, Åsta Birkeland, Liv Torunn Grindheim and Geir Aaserud. A particular thank you to Reidun Faye, with whom I shared both offices, laughter, frustrations and coffee breaks. I have been part of the doctoral programme at the Norwegian Center for Child Research, and I would like to thank Professor Anne Trine Kjørholt and Professor Vebjørg Tingstad for their comments and feedback at the half-way and closing seminar for my doctoral project. There are many people at NOSEB and IPL who have been important for this project in direct and indirect ways. First of all, I want to thank Head of Department Hans Petter Ulleberg. I also want to give special thanks to Marit Ursin, Ingvild Kvale Sørenssen, Tatek Abebe, Kjersti Grinde, Linn Cathrin Lorgen, Kari Vikhammermo, Karin Ekberg, Mari Gunnman Furunes and Bent Olsen (and the list could go on) – for making everyday life more enjoyable, both in an academic and personal sense. I had a wonderful stay and Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) during the course of this process, and wish to send my gratitude to the NIAS SUPRA Nordic Scholarship and Director Geir Helgesen for this opportunity. I also want to thank my brilliant copy editor Gerda Wever at The Write Room for her sharp and observant eyes. Finally, I thank my closest friends and family for being there through hardships and joys. I thank Gro Prestegaard Eriksen for great friendship and support –celebrating when I received the position as PhD candidate, visiting during fieldwork, and cheering me on when the dissertation was approved. A warm thank you to my family Torun, Geir, Magnus and Karstein who always feel close by, even if we live miles apart –for making it feel easy and safe to ask for help and advice. Finally, to my closest crowd Amund, Olav, Kim and Kokos –thank you for everyday life. Abstract This thesis is an ethnographic study of discipline - as relational everyday social practice - in two urban Chinese kindergartens. The study is based on 11 months of ethnographic fieldwork in two kindergarten classes in Shanghai the autumn of 2011 and the spring of 2012, using participant observation and qualitative research interviews with children and teachers in the two kindergartens. The thesis is written within the interdisciplinary research field of Childhood studies, emphasizing children’s position as social actors and informants in research alongside adults (James and Prout 1997, James et al. 1998), and emphasizing how understandings of childhood and discipline are contextually based (Montgomery 2009). Bourdieu’s concepts field, habitus and capital constitute an analytical frame for capturing both the social and historical conditions of practice, as well as how agents perceive and operate such practices (Bourdieu 1977, 1992). The research questions are: 1) In which ways are disciplinarian practices present in relationships between teachers and children in the kindergartens? 2) How do the children experience, relate to and partake in such practices? And 3) How do everyday disciplinarian practices relate to contemporary views of, and future concerns with, children and childhood in the Chinese context? Disciplinarian practices are understood as practices of control, regulation or guidance in the kindergarten everyday life, including elements of self-discipline and the forming and controlling of own habits. Discipline is explored in a wide sense: in spatial and temporal structures (layout of classrooms, wall decorations, division/use of time), in the regulation of bodies (group divisions, individual physical separation, routinized behaviours, rigorous practicing, physical punishment), and in different activities of organized play. In the thesis, attention is also directed at how discipline is expressed and communicated, and how this connects to contextually significant notions of guan (loving control), guai (ideal behaviour) and moral. Furthermore, practices of evaluation, differential treatment and comparison are explored through the notion of relationality. Values of order and control, correct behaviour, evaluation, and the public character of discipline in the kindergartens are emphasised throughout the chapters. Such practices and structures make out the social conditions of the field, and the embodiment of such practices and values are particularly emphasised (Bourdieu 1977). This part of the thesis particularly refers to adult-child relationships in the kindergartens, which is theorized using the notion of generational ordering as a mutually constitutive aspect of intergenerational relationships in the kindergartens (Alanen 2009, 2015). Particular forms of field-specific embodied cultural capital (kindergarten, guan and guai) exemplifies how children themselves partake in disciplinarian practices. These practices are not only top-down, teacher-child ordered practices, but also significant in relations between children, both in everyday life as well as in assigned tasks involving practices of domination in the classroom, exemplified through the tasks of duty children, little teachers and team leaders. The children did however, not have equal opportunity to dominate others due to their differential endowment with and use of capital and thus their position in social space, and such variations are explored with reference to a relational understanding of agency (Burkitt, 2016). A relational (interdependent and differential) aspect is thus part of the children’s practical sense (habitus) (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992) of discipline, along with a form of situational sensitivity and a seizing of opportunities for secrecy and play, including the challenging of field values. A concern in literature on contemporary Chinese childhoods is that raised living standards, the opening up policy, and particularly the ‘one-child policy’ has led to a generation of spoiled ‘little emperors’ receiving too much attention from parents and grandparents (“4-2-1 family syndrome”). Chinese kindergartens are considered an appropriate place to deal with this challenge, in part through practices of control and discipline, while simultaneously securing cultural continuity and providing social change (Hsueh and Tobin, 2003). The final analytical chapter of the thesis describes how such concerns are met in one of the kindergartens through a particular form of educational approach called ‘frustration education,’ which aimed to balance out children’s emotional state in order to enable them to cope with challenges in their contemporary and future daily lives. The conceptual pair duties and privileges serve as a useful representation of the daily experiences with discipline of children in two urban Chinese kindergartens, as well as reflect views of children and childhood, and the individual in the Chinese context (Bakken, 1994; Xiaotong 1992; Hansen & Svarverud, 2010). Contents PART I: INTRODUCTION OF TOPIC AND CONTEXT ....................................................