ABSTRACT
Intellectual dialogue between Bourdieu and Chinese education is to neither transplant Bourdieu's sociological tools to Chinese educational contexts nor use Chinese education as a baseline to test Bourdieu. This dialogue instead requires reflexivity, criticality, and creativity. To appropriate the dialogue, we begin this chapter by looking at self-socioanalysis, homing in on with some suggestions for enacting the practical reflexivity of Bourdieu in research on Chinese education. We follow this with a discussion of the symbolic violence and value of putting Bourdieu to work in investigation of Chinese education. In this respect, we engage with a critical response to two problematics: (1) the risk of colonisation of one research community by another; and (2) the possibility of transcending theory beyond its context of origin. We conclude the chapter by coming to grips with some of the social and educational changes in China that continue to pose difficult and complicated questions for Bourdieusian sociologists of Chinese education, warranting further investigation.
