Articulating School Countercultures - blogs@NTU · Kipnis Articulating School Countercultures 473 wealthy English-speaking nations (the United States, Great Britain, and New Zealand),

Articulating School CounterculturesANDREW KIPNISThe Australian National University

Starting from the observation that writings about student subcultures andantischool countercultures are much more common for wealthy English-speak-ing nations than elsewhere, this article develops the concept of "articulation" tohelp clarify the counterculture concept and differentiate fully developed coun-tercultures from other forms of student resistance. Using examples from manynations, especially East Asia, I hope to contribute to an ethnology of schoolingby exploring the social and cultural forces that promote and impede the articu-lation of school subcultures and countercultures.

Overlapping images of polarized student subcultures (student group-ings formed around particular expressive values) and oppositionalschool countercultures (subcultures whose expressive values criticallydismiss schooling and academic virtues) dominate representations ofsecondary education in the wealthy English-speaking world.1 In schol-arly writing, Hargreaves (1967) and Willis (1977) provide the classic por-trayals of white, male, British working-class school countercultures,while Walker (1988) and Connell (1993) provide a similar service forAustralia. In the United States, such portrayals may be found in work byColeman (1961) and Schwartz (1987:109-147), while Fordham (1996),Fordham and Ogbu (1986), Matute-Bianchi (1986), and Schwartz(1987:195-230) depict the relations between racial identity and schoolcountercultures in the U.S. context. Scholarly portrayals of polarizedstudent subcultures in the United States and England may be found inDelamont (1984), Eckert (1989), Schwartz (1987:56-69), and Varenne(1982). Such portrayals are echoed by depictions of American highschool life in movies, novels and television that present high school as aworld populated with well-defined, often antiacademic and mutuallyantagonistic groups of jocks, socialites, nerds, and freaks. That some re-searchers (e.g. Connell 1977:152-189; Tapia 1998) have felt the need toargue against exaggerating the prevalence and social effects of schoolcountercultures only underscores the extent to which the presumptionof the existence of such countercultures has become a norm in wealthyEnglish-speaking nations.

In contrast, analysts of education in the non-English speaking worldhave rarely written explicitly about school subcultures and countercul-tures. Though John Ogbu's (1978) classic study of caste and negative at-titudes toward education compared six cases, three of these involved

Anthropology & Education Quarterly 32(4);472-492. Copyright © 2001, American AnthropologicalAssociation.

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Kipnis Articulating School Countercultures 473

wealthy English-speaking nations (the United States, Great Britain, andNew Zealand), while another (scheduled castes in India) was marked bythe absence of a negative attitude toward education. In the remaining twocases (Oriental Jews in Israel and Barakus in Japan), the oppressed casteshad formed fatalistic attitudes toward education, but it was not clearwhether these attitudes constituted antischool countercultures. Okanoand Tsuchiya (1999:121-127, 244) give an excellent portrait of whatcould be called a Baraku antischool subculture, but even their descrip-tion does not make clear whether participants in this subculture ostra-cize more academically oriented students and whether they expresstheir countercultural sentiments within the schools themselves. If not, touse the language developed below, the Baraku antischool countercul-ture is not as well articulated as those described in Britain and the UnitedStates. In his forward to the English language edition of Bourdieu andPasseron's famous work on reproduction in French society, culture andeducation, Tom Bottomore comments on their lack of discussion of acounterculture but assumes that "this aspect of their subject is doubtlessone that will be more fully developed in the future" (Bourdieu and Pas-seron 1977:viii). What Bottomore does not consider is that the Frenchsystem might not produce the same sort of counterculture as the British.Two studies directly address the issue of "missing" sub- and/or coun-tercultures. Levinson (1998) notes and provides an explanation for theabsence of student subcultures in a Mexican secudaria, while Wan ChawShae (1999) argues that student noncompliance in Hong Kong schoolscannot be explained by theories of an antischool countercultures.

In my own research and reading on education in the People's Repub-lic of China (PRC), I too have seen little that I would describe as eithercountercultures or subcultures. As certainly exists in schools in France,Mexico, Hong Kong, and elsewhere, I witnessed and read about in-stances of conflict, student resistance to educational authorities, andeven criticism of the education system as a whole. None of this, how-ever, seemed to constitute countercultures or even subcultures.

In this article, I set out two tasks. The first is to conceptually distin-guish the term school counterculture from these other forms of resistance.This involves constructing an ideal type counterculture from images ofschools in wealthy English-speaking nations. I use the term well-articulatedschool counterculture to describe this ideal. The second is to describe thetypes of social forces that encourage or inhibit the formation of the idealwell-articulated school counterculture. By focusing on social forces thatcan be present in different degrees and different combinations in rela-tion to an ideal type, I hope to move toward a comparative theoreticalapparatus that explains the presence or absence of school countercul-tures in any number of contexts, without denying that the origin of myquestion lies in the particular and peculiar experiences of an Americandoing research in China. Further, though I am struck by the contrast be-tween writings on schools in the wealthy English-speaking nations and

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elsewhere, I would emphasize that I see uniqueness of education in thosenations as a matter of degree rather than kind. As the excellent work ofGary Schwartz (1987) demonstrates, there is considerable diversity inthe prevalence and power of student sub- and countercultures amongdifferently situated U.S. high schools. Sub- and/or countercultures maybe more prevalent in wealthy English-speaking nations, but they are notubiquitous there. The theoretical apparatus presented here is meant tobe of value in explaining differences among schools in wealthy English-speaking nations as well.

Identity and Metaphors of Articulation

Perhaps originating in the writings on youth subcultures by scholarsfrom the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (e.g.,Clarke et al. 1976; Hall 1996), the word articulation is more and morecommonly used to describe the processes by which expressive actionsproduce cultural identities. The word works well because its richness ofmeaning speaks to the complexity of processes of identity formation.Leaving this richness unpacked, however, glosses over what exactlythese processes entail. I thus begin my portrayal of an ideal well-articu-lated school counterculture by elaborating my use of the term.

As Jean Comaroff (1985:153-155) explains, the word articulation hastwo common meanings in English: "to join" and "to express." The join-ing aspect of the term can be used to point at the multiple connectionsmade in complex sociocultural processes. In the case of identity forma-tion in school contexts, these connections begin with the integration ofschools into their sociocultural contexts. Though schools are one of mod-ernity's central features (Green 1997), their ubiquity belies the complex-ity of the integration of systems of formal schooling into the globe's myr-iad of sociocultural contexts. First of all, as Levinson and Holland (1996)argue, the definition of an "educated person" promoted by a givenschool system can intersect in a variety of ways with the definitions ofadulthood and learnedness in the surrounding community. Secondly, ata socioeconomic level, the relation of academic achievement to occupa-tion and income potential varies greatly across the uneven landscape ofthe global economy. Thirdly, at the level of an individual's integrationwith wider world, the conjuncture of formal school systems and thewider sociocultural landscape involves problems at the levels of bothidentity and self-formation, to use Diane Hoffman's (1998) terms. In ad-dition to its value in defining student subcultures and countercultures,focusing on the complexity of this conjuncture should contribute to theproject, advocated by Levinson (1999), of bridging the gap between nar-rowly defined ethnographies of schools and broader anthropologicalstudies of sociocultural processes that, despite their breadth, ignoreschools.

The expressive aspect of the word articulation adds another dimen-sion to the processes of identity formation. As Dick Hebdige (1979,1988)


describes it, youth countercultures are spectacular. Highly articulatedschool countercultures make expressive spectacles of themselves, an-nouncing their rejection of school norms in myriad ways. This concernwith expressive acts deflects the focus of my use of the term articulationslightly away from the conjuncture described above. What I describe asarticulated is not the conjuncture of schools and their wider social con-texts, but a complex relationship among expressive actions. Articulationis a process involving many expressive actions (of students and others)that leads to the emergence of a school sub- or counterculture: schoolsub- or countercultures themselves can be described as "articulated,"and student actions can "articulate" a sub- or counterculture.

The school/society conjuncture, however, is still a focus of my con-cern. For what the expressive actions of a given subculture say about thisconjuncture plays a determining role in how I distinguish countercul-tures from subcultures. School countercultures form in expressive oppo-sition to the schools themselves, rejecting academic virtues. This opposi-tion, as described in much of the literature on school countercultures,reflects a concern with the place of schools in reproducing wider hierar-chies of race, ethnicity, class, or gender. Only expressive acts that imply acritical perception of the reproduction of an unjust social or cultural pat-tern across the school/society conjuncture help articulate an ideal schoolcounterculture. Where the critical expressive actions of students alsoecho critiques made in the wider community, the articulation is evenmore complete. All of this makes the articulation of countercultures amatter of degree. The more instances of student rejection of academicnorms and values are expressive, involve the critical perception of thereproduction of sociocultural patterns, and relate to critical modes of ex-pressing selfhood and identity in the wider community in complex andcomplementary fashion, the more they articulate a school countercul-ture.

Well-Articulated School Countercultures

The above discussion has been necessarily abstract and it is now timeto illustrate with some examples. Paul Willis (1977) and Signithia Ford-ham (1996) provide two of the most compelling and eloquent descrip-tions of school countercultures. Though both write about wealthy Eng-lish-speaking nations, the fact that one focuses on class in Englandduring the 1970s and the other on race in the United States during the1990s covers much of the variety extant in the school counterculturegenre.

The school counterculture of "the lads" described by Willis is well ar-ticulated in every sense. The lads' opposition to school authority is ex-pressive to a fault. They dress loudly and distinctively. When possiblethey provoke openly, half-denying and half-acknowledging, for exam-ple, their schooltime smoking and drinking to teachers and other schoolauthorities. At every opportunity they "have a laff" at the expense of


teachers, authorities, or conformist students. When their actions are tooillicit to perform openly, they brag about it later to all but the authorities.Even when talking on tape with an adult like Willis, they exhibit noqualms about discussing their fighting, vandalism, stealing, and sexlives. In brief, their whole demeanor is loud, full of explicit or barely im-plicit rebellion.

The counterculture the lads articulate also directly critiques the role ofschools in the reproduction of social class. Their school is situated in aworking-class neighborhood with an entrenched history of school fail-ure leading to factory jobs. Their fathers and uncles tell them of theworthlessness of theory and book learning and the uselessness and lackof masculinity of the men who gain authority through education. AsWillis describes it, the lads' counterculture intersects with their maleelders' shopfloor culture to articulate a critique of the place of schoolingin reproducing what they see as unreasonable relations of authority. Insum, because the lads' actions are loudly expressive, involve the criticalperception of the role of schooling in the reproduction of class, and relateto critical modes of expressing selfhood and identity of their fathers, un-cles, and older brothers, their actions clearly articulate a school counter-culture.

Fordham's focus is broader than Willis's and the counterculture thatshe describes is in some senses slightly less articulated. Though Willisacknowledges the existence of both working-class conformist studentsand would-be middle-class rebels, he focuses primarily on rebellious,working-class, countercultural boys—the lads. In contrast, Fordhamrepresents African American students of both genders whose embraceof schooling varies widely. By showing how black antischool culture at"Capital High" affects a range of African American students, Fordhambroadens our understanding of the impact countercultures can have.Her disassociation of antischool culture from a specific clique of stu-dents further gives her book a different theoretical thrust than that ofWillis. Although Fordham emphasizes a disembodied cultural form thatcreates (embodied) "dilemmas of race identity, and success" for CapitalHigh students, Willis focuses on a specific group of students who(re)create a particular cultural form. The two approaches can and shouldbe seen as complementary.

As in the case described by Willis, the school counterculture at CapitalHigh both critiques the role of schools in the reproduction of inequality,and reverberates in the surrounding community. It equates schoolachievement with the white domination of society and pursuing aca-demic success with whiteness and a desire for racist domination. It isechoed in the comments of community adults who see too much school-ing as wasted effort for African Americans and, like the working-classf athers of the lads, privilege practical experience over book learning. Intwo respects, however, the counterculture described by Fordham differsfrom that of Willis. First, the histories of slavery, emancipation, segregation,


second emancipation, and racism, though engendering a deep suspicionof white authority, did not equate education with whiteness until afterwhat Fordham calls the second emancipation of the Civil Rights move-ment. In this respect, the antagonism to schools at Capital High may notbe as historically entrenched as that of the lads. Second, the countercul-ture at Capital High seems less directly expressed than that of the lads.Even the less academically oriented students Fordham describes do notseem to relish direct challenges to school authorities in the way that thelads do. However, in their silences, their use of black English, their pat-terns of avoidance, humor, and anxiety, and their ostracism or evenbeating of students who do not conform to countercultural norms, thestudents of Capital High give enough expression to an antiwhite school-ing black identity to articulate a significant school counterculture.

Articulation Impeded and Promoted

Having defined the features of a well-articulated school countercul-ture, it is now possible to explore cases in which countercultures or evensubcultures are not as strong. Here I focus on the social forces that eitherimpede or promote the articulation of school countercultures. I dividethis section into two parts to reflect two aspects of the word articula-tion—expression and societal conjuncture—though I take this divisionprimarily as a heuristic device.

Promoting and Impeding Societal Articulation

Societal articulation is promoted when social forces or circumstancescause schools to be perceived as acting to reproduce societal inequalities.Social forces or circumstances that inhibit this perception impede socie-tal articulation. I emphasize perception here neither to deny that schoolsoften do reproduce inequalities, nor to imply that community percep-tions on this issue are necessarily inaccurate. Usually, but not always,circumstances that cause schools to reproduce inequalities also causethem to be perceived that way. However, the possibility of communityperceptions varying widely or diverging from those of the researcher al-ways exists, and thus the perceptual dimension remains important.

Perhaps the least likely environment for societal articulation is a com-munity in which schools are widely seen as vehicles of social mobility.Social mobility is the antithesis of reproduction. It implies change ratherthan continuity, a reshuffling of the deck rather than the reinforcementof existing structures. Newness of or change in the school/society junc-ture itself is one circumstance that can promote community belief in thepossibilities of mobility. Where I conducted research in rural China(Zouping County, Shandong Province), there was both a long-standinghistorical linkage of schooling to social mobility and a more recent ex-pansion of access to social mobility through education. For nearly athousand years, a small minority of Chinese people had scaled the

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heights of the social ladder by succeeding in the imperial exams (Ho1964). Though most could not afford an education, Zouping had housedacademies (shuyuan) and arrangements for private teaching (sishu) for aminority throughout the Ch'ing dynasty (Zouping County Local His-tory Editorial Committee 1992). However, though educational mobilityfor the few had a long history, it was not until 1985 that even primaryeducation was universalized. In 1980 less than 15 percent of primarygraduates made it to senior middle school (year 10-12); in 1999 this fig-ure reached 50 percent (Kipnis 2001). The expansion of educational op-portunity in Zouping during the 1980s and 1990s was matched by the re-linking of social mobility to academic success. During the Maoist era,educational success had been decoupled from social mobility. AfterMao, not only was educational achievement re-linked to social mobility,rapid economic development also made economic mobility a possibilityfor a significant minority. Most of those youth who left their villages toenter higher-status jobs in urban areas during this period followed theroad of academic success to social mobility. Not surprisingly, parentaland community pressure to study hard and embrace schooling becamewidespread.

In Zouping, perceptions of the possibility of mobility through educa-tion were facilitated by at least three factors: the longstanding history ofthe linkage between education and status, the recent experience of thislinkage and, most importantly, the newness of the educational experi-ence itself. During the 1980s, few rural Zouping adults would have at-tributed their own relatively low social status to educational failure.Most simply never had the chance to seriously attend school. During theMaoist era, some highly educated people were actually stripped of anysocial status they had and forced to live as "peasants" in rural villages.Thus, despite the long-standing history of education in Zouping, it wasonly in the 1980s that the vast majority of children got both the chance tosucceed educationally and the opportunity to have their educationalsuccess translated into real social mobility.2

In many developing nations it may be the case that schools simplyhave not been around long enough to allow the formation of long-stand-ing community-based suspicion of their role in the larger society. Thefreshness of the educational experience, however, cannot last forever. Ifthe present pattern of academic achievers leaving Zouping's villagescontinues, then one day Zouping's villages will be filled with parentswhose own experience of the education system was that of failure. Theirlowly "peasant" status will be linked to their lack of academic successand the school/society conjuncture may begin to articulate expressionsof discontent about the school system. The extent to which such parentsand their children will come to resemble the lads and their parents inWillis's (1977) account is an interesting if depressing question.

There are, of course, moments beyond the initial construction of aschool system that can insert freshness into the school/society juncture.


Reforms that invite previously excluded communities to the school orinsert culturally relevant linguistic and cultural content to the curricu-lum have the potential to change patterns of the reproduction of ethnicinequality through schooling. To be effective, however, such reformsmust link the new access to education to new opportunities for socialmobility after graduation. Otherwise, perceptions of the value of school-ing are not likely to change much.

Three other aspects of the school/society conjuncture and its relationto the perception of possibilities for mobility deserve mention. First isthe experience of immigration. Immigrants are often particularly hun-gry for social mobility and the fact of their immigration may indicate abelief in the possibility of mobility for their children through the schoolsystem (Gibson 1988:167-200). In this case the perception of fresh possi-bilities comes not so much from reform to the system itself, but from themovement of the immigrant. Fresh perceptions are always matters ofboth the subject perceiving and the object perceived.

Second is the case of a complete decoupling of academic achievementand postgraduation social position. Such a decoupling appeared to betaking place in the Mexican school described by Levinson (1996). Re-gardless of whether students there attended school and excelled, at-tended but were academically mediocre, or did not attend at all, the besteconomic opportunities lay in migrating to the United States and takingup the menial jobs available to Mexican migrants. Such a decouplingputs an end to both the possibility of mobility through schools and thereproduction of inequality in schools. Consequently, though it mightnot tend to articulate a school counterculture as I have defined it here, itcould easily lead to student apathy. In Cultural Revolution China, suchdecoupling had precisely that result (Unger 1982).

Third is the case in which an established school system is able to pro-duce new inequalities as often as it reproduces old ones, a system inwhich both the children of elites experience downward mobility andnonelite children have a chance of translating academic success into elitestatus. Traces of this dynamic can be found in both the imperial andmodern Chinese education systems. In the old imperial examinationsystem, the memorization work required to succeed in the exams was soarduous and tedious that the relatively comfortable sons of fathers whohad reached gentry status often found themselves either unable or un-willing to compete (Ho 1964). In post-Mao China, rural children desper-ate for a chance at urban jobs are usually considered more disciplinedstudents than their relatively comfortable urban counterparts (Kipnis2001). Their ability to "eat bitterness" (chiku) underwrites their univer-sity entrance exam success. In a perverse twist of logic, this metaphorsuggests that such systems promote social mobility (both upward anddownward) by making learning distasteful.

In addition to social circumstances that affect perceptions of the possibili-ties of mobility, school practices that encourage or inhibit the reproduction


of societal splits within the school setting also have a significant impacton societal articulation. Here Levinson's (1998) discussion of the lack ofstudent subcultures at a Mexican secondary school provides an excellentstarting point. Levinson notes that the student body of the school he ob-served was quite diverse in terms of ethnicity and class and asks whythat diversity did not lead to the formation of distinct student subcul-tures. His answer is that the school's procedures for forming homeroomgroups (grupo escolar) purposefully muted the importation of societaldifference into the school context. The school made sure that its classeswere not segregated by academic ability and this resulted in a great dealof economic and social diversity within each group. After forming thesegroups, the school placed a great deal of emphasis on solidarity andequality within them. In turn, the students embraced the school ideol-ogy by routinely sharing homework and engaging in other practices thatmuted the emergence of academic differentiation. The only identity ar-ticulated by either the school authorities or the students themselves wasthat of being "schooled" (Levinson 1996). Because this identity took the"unschooled" (those who did not attend school) as its Other, it had littlesignificance within the school itself. In short, the school and studentsacted in concert to prevent the articulation of difference across theschool/society conjuncture.

The practices and structures described by Levinson contrast sharplywith American high schools where students either choose or are placedinto differing academic tracts and have the option of participating in awide range of extracurricular activities. Often all of this so-called"choice" is simply a vehicle by which preexisting class, ethnic, or genderdifferences are reproduced in the formation of school groupings. Evenworse is the case where such "choice" simply translates popular preju-dice (like "girls can't do math") into social reality. To give just one exam-ple, a recent New York Times article about race in an integrated U.S. highschool describes how black and white students were split both by theclasses they attended and the sports they played after school (Lewin2000).

In terms of a global comparison, it may be the American practice that isrelatively unique. In France there are no optional extracurricular activi-ties around which students might articulate subcultural identities (An-derson-Levitt: personal communication, June 1,2000). In both China andJapan, class formation procedures resemble those described by Levin-son for Mexico. Among the Japanese high schools visited by Thomas Ro-hlen during the 1970s, interschool differentiation was structured in partto enable the minimization of differences and an emphasis on equalitywithin each school (Rohlen 1983). Because all of the students in theseschools took exactly the same classes, "homerooms" of students stayedtogether all day long. As in the Mexican school investigated by Levin-son, the homeroom groupings themselves were formed with an eye topreventing segregation in terms of academic ability or social differences.


In the high schools I observed in China (Kipnis 2001), similar practicesprevailed. The only choice was whether one was a science or a humani-ties student.

In the case of China, as in many other countries, examinations keepthe potentially most resentful students out of the system altogether.Compulsory education ends after year nine, and senior middle school(years 10-12) is restricted to those who test well and/or are willing topay for it (Kipnis 2001). Such systems further impede the formation ofantischool subcultures by blocking at the outset those with the most po-tential to develop critical attitudes.

Finally, an over-multiplication of student subcultures can also under-mine the societal articulation of school countercultures. Though stu-dents at many American high schools form distinctive subcultures,these subcultures do not always articulate school countercultures. To doso the subcultures must align themselves in relation to a critical anti-in-tellectual discourse. In a recent article about students who pursue sci-ence prizes at Midwood High School in New York City, Stephen Hall(2000) wonders why these students are not as defensive as those in thescience club back in his high school days. In Hall's memory, members ofthe science clubs were so ridiculed by the majority of high school stu-dents that their very body language reeked of defensiveness. The scienceclub of Hall's high school was not just another student group, like theband or track team, but a prime target of the ostracism of a virulent antis-cholastic student counterculture. As in the case of the counterculturesdescribed by Willis and Fordham, the lines were drawn clearly. Therewas an "us" and a "them," with the counterculture defining anythingacademic as culturally other. In contrast, student subcultures at Mid-wood were too numerous to divide easily into dichotomous us/themgroupings. At Midwood academic brilliance had become "just anotherform of diversity at a school with an Islamic Society and Gay-StraightAlliance . . . Science [was] just another alternative lifestyle" (Hall2000:90). Extremely fragmented subcultural groupings do not lendthemselves to clearly dichotomous identities and thus also tend to im-pede the articulation of antischool countercultures.

Promoting and Impeding Expressive Articulation

Expressive articulation is promoted by circumstances or practices thatencourage the expression of sub- or countercultural sentiments and im-peded by those that do not. Because I take expressive culture to be an in-trinsically dialogic process (Bakhtin 1981; Todorov 1984), this sort cf ar-ticulation is not only about restricting individual expression, but moreimportantly about restricting or channeling the patterns of consumptionand reproduction of strands of discourse. This channeling involves thesocial underpinnings of human interaction as much as processes ofspeaking, listening, reading, and signifying themselves.


Individual expression, however, remains an important starting pointfor the discussion of school countercultures. Moreover, discussion of in-dividual expressiveness allows for a shifting of my focus from the levelof identity formation to that of self-formation. Following Hoffman, Itake identity to refer to perceptions of one's place in the wider society(usually informed by notions of gender, ethnicity, class, age, etc.), whileself refers to "culturally patterned ways of relating to others" (1998:326).As Tobin et al. (1989) show in their study of preschools in the UnitedStates, China, and Japan, what is most distinctive about American earlychildhood education is the extent to which an ideology of teaching self-expression is at the heart of the process. Although Chinese children aretaught to recite stories and songs and Japanese children to use polite for-mulas, American children are taught to find the words to express what isthought of as internal and personal. American children are constantlyasked, indeed required, to express their individualized feelings, opin-ions, and preferences. As Tobin et al. put it, "American children enjoygreat freedom to express their opinions and feelings, but conversely,they are much less free than children in China or Japan to remain silentand hide their feelings. Speech in American preschools, then, is con-strained differently, not less, than in China and Japan" (1989:153).

The ideological emphasis on individual expressiveness in Americaneducation raises the ironic question of whether American students whodramatically express their subcultural or countercultural sentiments arenot at some level doing exactly what their educational institutions ask ofthem. In both China (Terry Wonorov, personal communication, May 30,2000) and Mexico (Levinson 1998:287), thoughtful adults explain stu-dent desire to fit in with the group, to not stick out, to be individually un-expressive, as a matter of collectivism. None of this is to say that Chineseor Mexican students are unable to express themselves. Rather, the pointis that the desire to distinguish oneself through expressive acts is not cul-turally unmediated. The ideological promotion of individual expressionin the school curriculum encourages expressive articulation.3

A disposition toward individual expressiveness, however, is only oneaspect of the dialogic emergence of countercultural discourse. Levinson(1998:287) argues that calling Mexican or Chinese students less indi-vidualistic than American students really does not explain the absenceof subcultural expression. Student subcultures or countercultures arealso collective entities. The lads described by Willis can be seen as need-ing to fit into a group as much as students in China or Mexico. "Individ-ual" expression always requires commitment to a larger cultural entity.However, if one moves from the level of ideological reifications of indi-vidualism to a consideration of what "expressive individualism" meansin practice, the contradiction eases. In subcultures, American studentsfind a way to reconcile a (collectivist) desire to have friends and fit into agroup with the need to be seen as individually expressive. By joining agroup with a particular expressive style, students express themselves.


What would violate the American norm of individual expressivenesswould be to simply accept an identity or social grouping chosen by theschool authorities. The "individual" expression arises from the act of(being seen as) choosing one's friends.

Student atomization impedes expressive articulation by underminingthe social foundations of dialogue and, hence, expressive subcultures.Throughout East Asia, and perhaps in other nations as well, extremelyhigh-stakes entrance examination systems are an atomizing force. Thepresence of such examination systems also differentiates most EastAsian schools from the Mexican school described by Levinson. Thoughboth places seem to share the use of heterogenous homeroom groupingsto reduce student choice and impede the articulation of the school/soci-ety juncture, in Japan and China the exam system interferes with thehomeroom solidarity Levinson describes in Mexico. East Asian studentsknow they are in an all-against-all competition. In China metaphorsliken the university entrance exams to a war. Getting into university iscalled "crossing the single-log bridge" (dumu qiao), a reference to a storyin which a large number of people must cross a single log bridging atreacherous ravine in a limited amount of time. Naturally, there is a lotof pushing and shoving, which only makes the crossing more treacher-ous. Most never make it. As senior year approaches the competition getsmore and more intense. Novels describing high school life tell stories ofstudents becoming more and more selfish as exam time approaches(e.g., Xiao 1995; Xu 1994). Japanese students celebrate the entrance to anew school rather than graduation as the latter occurs just after the divi-sive and dividing entrance exam to the next level of schooling (Rohlen1983).

The Chinese situation also contradicts Levinson's (1998:288) conclu-sion that the imperative of nation-building leads developing nations toemphasize solidarity in their classrooms. In China, there is a heavy doseof nationalism in all classes, but it is approached in a competitive fash-ion. From the virtuocracy of Maoism (Shirk 1982) to the politics sectionof the contemporary university entrance exam, students are rewardedfor doing better than their classmates in their displays of patriotism,knowledge of politically correct nationalist history, and willingness todie for the nation. Patriotic display in China almost always involvescompetitive politics.

Collectivist policing measures can also lead to student atomization, asdescribed by Bronfenbrenner (1970) in his comparative study of Sovietand American childhood. In the Soviet Union, teachers involved the stu-dent "collective" in the process of disciplining children. When one stu-dent misbehaved, school authorities blamed the entire class and got stu-dent leaders involved in the public criticism of the misbehaving student.For example, when a fifth-grade student, Vova, continually forgot hismath homework, the problem was brought up in front of the entire class.Students stood up and publicly criticized Vova. Finally, one student


suggested that two classmates be assigned to "supervise" Vova when-ever there was math homework (Bronfenbrenner 1970:64-65). Thismethod of disciplining students, versions of which are used in China,has the effect of breaking up the student/school authority dichotomy.Students are forced to act on behalf of adult authorities and thus to pub-licly adopt what could only be described as extremely conformist pos-tures. Consequently, Bronfenbrenner argues, Russian students focusmore heavily on their relations with adults than with student peergroups. In contrast, Bronfenbrenner argues, American students orientthemselves almost exclusively toward their peer groups. The adults intheir lives, both at home and in school, devote less time and effort to dis-ciplining them. Interestingly enough, the country that Bronfenbrennersees as most similar to the United States, both in terms of the lack ofadult attention and discipline and the emergence of "antisocial" youthbehavior, is Great Britain. He attributes this similarity to a shared Anglo-Saxon individualism, a lack of adult involvement and discipline, and theemergence of popular culture (Bronfenbrenner 1970:115-116). Bronfen-brenner may generalize too broadly about schools in the United Statesand Britain. As Schwartz's (1987:148-192) examination of an AmericanCatholic high school makes clear, authoritarian practices can mute theemergence of student subcultures in wealthy English-speaking nationsas well. But Schwartz's finding also underscores Bronfenbrenner'slarger point. The type of ideological individualism found by Tobin et al.(1989) is more prevalent in the school worlds of wealthy English-speak-ing nations and includes a reluctance to use collective and authoritariandisciplinary tactics as well as an emphasis on expressive individualism.4

Finally, how sub- and countercultural discourses circulate in thewider society also influences processes of expressive articulation withinschools. Popular culture provides a myriad of channels for the produc-tion, consumption, and circulation of expressive symbols, discoursesand styles. Though the circulation of countercultural symbols and dis-cursive formations in popular culture is certainly international, it doesnot reach every corner of the globe in precisely the same way. In terms ofthe problematic of assessing the emergence of countercultures, twopoints seem relevant. First, the predominance of the English language inmany forms of global youth culture may help limit the circulation of re-bellious discourse in non-English-speaking nations. Second, authoritiesin schools and governments may take measures to censure the circula-tion of countercultural forms. At the national level, television, radio,print, and Internet content may be regulated, while at the school level,dress codes, control of student publications, and even outright bans onbooks or songs with "unhealthy" content can serve to restrict student ex-pression of countercultural sentiments. In China, it is certainly the casethat both types of censorship exist at far greater levels than in the UnitedStates. None of this is to argue that Chinese students'have never heardof, for example, punk music. It is a simply a matter of the extent of the


exposure. Few American students arrive at high school without beingfully versed in a wide range of countercultural expressive forms, andmany American schools are reluctant to explicitly censure student ex-pression. Constricting the flow of countercultural expressive forms isanother means of impeding the expressive articulation of school coun-tercultures.

Resistance without Counterculture

Having presented a range oi forces and circumstances that impede thearticulation of countercultures, I now consider four types of student re-sistance in Chinese settings that do not articulate antischool countercul-tures. These examples do not necessarily cover the full range of studentnoncompliance in Chinese schools, but they are representative of impor-tant variants in the eyes of Chinese educators.

The first is disrespecting teachers. Wan Chaw Shae (1999:153-154), forexample, describes students at a Hong Kong secondary school ignoringtheir math teacher and playing games while their teacher was lecturing.Though on the surface their activities resemble some of the classroomantics of the lads described by Willis (1977), the students' motivationsare entirely different. Although the lads want to have a "laff" at the ex-pense of any authority, the Hong Kong students explain their behaviorin terms of their particular dislike for the teacher in question. In fact, be-cause these students felt that this math teacher did not live up to theideal of a proper teacher, one could almost say that they had internalizedthe school values more than the teacher himself. In no sense does theirbehavior articulate a critique of the role of schools in reproducing in-equality and in this sense is not countercultural. Schoenhals' (1993)study of a PRC senior middle school likewise gives many examples ofstudents disrespecting and criticizing their teachers. Again, however,these actions were motivated by attitudes toward particular teachersrather than school in general. At times, examples of disrespect describedby Schoenhals even involved student desire to demonstrate that theirown academic knowledge exceeded that of their teacher. Such academi-cally oriented disrespect cannot articulate an antischool counterculture.

The second type of student resistance is a generalized critique of theexamination system, a case of which is described in the semi-autobio-graphical novel Senior Times (Zheng Shi Gaosan Shi) (Xu 1994). Set in ayear-12 homeroom of a senior middle school, a group of students beginsto see the school authorities as their enemies. Although the school ex-pects year-12 students to devote themselves entirely to preparation forthe nationwide university entrance exam, these students advocate "allaround development'' (quanmianfazhan lun) instead. They secretly writeessays for local newspapers, organize their own literary magazine, readbooks not required for exam preparation, and so on. Though such activi-ties may seem too good to be true to many American educators, in thecontext of the Chinese education system, where so much rides on the


university entrance exams, parents and school authorities see such be-havior as just so much self-destructive adolescent rebellion. Becausethese students collectively and explicitly express their dissatisfactionwith school authorities, their actions may appear slightly more counter-cultural than the other examples discussed here. However, the students'actions fall short of articulating an ideal counterculture in several re-spects. First, though their critique of the exam system echoes discoursesin the wider society (e.g., Liu et al. 1997) and even in the educational bu-reaucracy (Cui Xianglu 1999), it does not involve the role of schools in re-producing inequalities in the wider society. This lack of reference to aspecific societal constituency is reinforced by the fact that the critiquehas no specific support in any locus of the community from which theycome. The lack of societal reference impedes the articulation of a coun-terculture.

The third type of resistance involves students who ostracize theirmore academically oriented peers. Though such ostracism might seemto indicate the type of countercultural attitudes portrayed in Americanpopular culture or described by Willis, it differs in one crucial respect.All of the students whom I either witnessed or heard criticized for carry-ing out such behavior in Zouping, or even read about in other PRC con-texts (e.g., Yu 1996:20), came from the most privileged sector of Chinesesociety. From a sociological point of view, those whom they criticizedwere not privileged students seeking to reproduce their privilegethrough schooling, but underprivileged students seeking to turn theschools into avenues for social mobility. That Chinese senior middleschools admit students who failed the entrance exam but whose parentspay large entrance fees creates a situation in which the worst studentsare often the richest. Such a policy, soon also to be implemented in NewSouth Wales (Australian) universities (Noonan and Baird 2000), and re-sembling that of elite American universities that admit the underquali-fied children of wealthy alumni, does not facilitate critical perceptions ofthe role of schools in reproducing inequality.

Cheating on exams is the final type of noncountercultural student re-sistance I consider. Cheating probably exists wherever there are examsbut, from the point of view of articulating countercultures, not all cheat-ing can be lumped together. Fordham (1996:92-93) describes some casesof cheating at Capital High as involving an assertion of African Ameri-can fictive kinship against the individuating ethos of exams. Though thecheating itself must be done covertly, such students later give voice tocountercultural sentiments by ostracizing classmates who are not will-ing to cheat. In China, however, none of the cheating cases I have readabout could be described in these terms. The most infamous cheatingscandals involve parents, teachers, and school authorities working to-gether to leak university entrance exam questions to knowing or un-knowing students (see Liu et al. 1997:70-71). Despite their collective na-ture, such cases do not articulate a school counterculture. Rather than


encouraging others to cheat, the participants in such scandals hope tomaximize their advantage by preventing others from cheating. They goto great lengths to conceal their actions. In its lack of expressiveness,such cheating resembles Borge Bakken's (2000:430-432) discussion of"ways of lying" under systems of Chinese "exemplary" authority. Bak-ken illustrates his discussion with the case of a prison that is run almostentirely by gangs who feign the utmost deference to prison authoritiesand, thereby, gain positions of trust and power within the walls. Like thecheating scandal, this form of resistance, no matter how organized andsuccessful, cannot be described as countercultural. Because the partici-pants conceal rather than express their identities, they fail to articulateany sort of critique.

Conclusion

By defining an ideal well-articulated counterculture and describingthe types of social and cultural circumstances that either impede or pro-mote the articulation of sub- and/or countercultures, I hope to have de-bunked myths of the universality of school sub- or countercultures, pro-vided a framework for differentiating countercultures from other formsof student resistance, and taken a first step toward explaining the pres-ence or absence of countercultures in various contexts. Because of thepredominance of linguistic ideologies that valorize individual expres-sion, the tendency (in the United States anyway) of reproducing socialstratification within schools by giving high school students a wide vari-ety of "choice," and the relatively long-standing historical role of schoolsas vehicles for the reproduction of class, ethnic, and gender differences, Isuspect that sub- and/or countercultures are more common in wealthyEnglish-speaking nations than in most others. However, I mean myanalysis to be applicable to differentiating among schools withinwealthy English-speaking nations as well.

The presence or absence of a school counterculture in a particular set-ting is perhaps always a matter of both degree and the perspective of theanalyst- By explicitly defining what makes for a more and less articu-lated school counterculture, I hope to contribute to an ethnology ofschooling that can both construct the means for bridging perceptualgaps among analysts and provide a basis for comparison. The work ofassessing the strength of a counterculture in a given school setting andexplaining exactly how forces that promote and impede articulation in-teract with the agency of students awaits further ethnographic research.

Andrew Kipnis is a fellow in the Department of Anthropology and the Contem-porary China Centre of The Australian National University, Canberra ([email protected]).


Notes

Acknowledgments. Research reported in this article was funded by the Re-search School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University(ANU). Thanks as always to all those who facilitated my research in ZoupingCounty, China. Audiences at the ANU provided useful commentary while DonGardner, Teresa McCarty, Francesca Merlan, Alan Rumsey, Terry Wonorov,three anonymous reviewers, and especially Kathryn M. Anderson-Levitt gavevaluable advice.

1. The classic work of Hargreaves (1967) provides a blueprint for the way Iuse the terms subculture and counterculture. He describes two distinct student"subcultures/' one of which informs my definition of a counterculture in itsclear rejection of academic values. For a much elaborate definition of "youth"subcultures see Clarke et al. (1976). Unlike my definitions, Clarke et al. use theterm counterculture to refer to the middle-class rebellion of the 1960s. Though theterms are different, and though Clarke et al- should be criticized for their lack offocus on schools, their approach is valuable for its discussion of "cultures" in re-lation to youth and society.

2. In the terms used by Ogbu (1978), Zouping rural dwellers' opportunitiesfor mobility made them more of a class than a caste. These terms, however, areconfusing in the context of this article for two reasons. First, the rural/urban di-vide in China has been previously described in terms of caste (Potter 1983). Sec-ondly, and more importantly, the terms suggest that school countercultures aremost likely to form where there are caste rather than class differences. Given thevivid class-based counterculture described by Willis (1977), I do not think thisdistinction can be sustained. I agree with Ogbu, however, that the reproductionof structural inequality is a factor in the articulation of school countercultures.

3. It could be argued that the ethos of expressing one's "self" is peculiar to themiddle classes and not applicable to families like those, for instance, in which"the lads" grew up. As Bernstein's (1971,1982) work on working-class speechshows, there can be significant differences of language use between people ofdifferent class backgrounds. Bernstein's work, however, has been criticized forportraying too closed a picture of working-class speech. If a self-expressiveethos is adopted by the teachers of working-class students, then it still may influ-ence groups like "the lads," at the very least by making space for them to de-velop their own modes of expression.

4. This discussion of student atomization and that of the fragmentation ofstudent subcultures in the previous section parallels debates among pluralistand totalitarian theorists over the structure of state-society relations in commu-nist political systems. The totalitarian theorists argued that by obliterating theline between public and private, the totalitarian state in effect obliterated soci-ety. People were entirely atomized, defined solely by their relation to the state it-self rather than each other. Conflicts occurred only between the state andindividuals. The pluralists countered that, at least after revolutions stabilize andpolitical terror subsides, social groups emerge and begin to pressure the state toact on their behalf. Consequently, conflict within the state apparatus begins tomimic conflict among social groups. If the totalitarian theorists eliminated soci-ety, the pluralists, by locating the origin of all conflicts within society, dimin-ished the state. Applying this debate to the problem of articulating schoolcountercultures, one could say that student atomization results from school "to-talitarianism," while subcultural fragmentation results from societal "pluralism."


Though the two theories can be taken as describing different extremes on a con-tinuum of real possibilities, they also can both be criticized for ignoring the dy-namic by which the structure of the state (school) itself influences the formationof groups in society (student body), and vise versa. Walder (1986) provides anexcellent summary and critique of totalitarian and pluralist theories.

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Articulating School Countercultures - blogs@NTU · Kipnis Articulating School Countercultures 473 wealthy English-speaking nations (the United States, Great Britain, and New Zealand),