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Space and bodies have been conceptualized as products and producers of social relations. They are woven together to shape identities, belongings, and cultures. This paper links culture to the mutual construction of space and bodies to spatialize the embodied lives of rural Chinese boys. Stories from a qualitative study of two middle schools illustrate how these rural boys experience embodied exclusions during the making of a learning space. These students also redefine the dominant meaning of the school space through an embodied-discursive construction of their lives. They shift their interests away from academic learning and move to emphasize social knowledge that focuses on social relations and social abilities. However, their re-appropriation of the space is interpreted as a gendered expression of noncooperation, which leads to their further marginalization within the academic-oriented space. This analysis examines in which body and which space is the rural boys' resistance produced. Turning to spatiality and embodiment provides an alternative interpretation of the counter-school culture of rural Chinese boys, which helps us more fully recognize the need for re-placing rural bodies in the Chinese education system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using longitudinal data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), this paper employed a set of techniques to investigate the mechanism through which participation in structured extracurricular activities affects students' academic performance. The main findings are as follows: (1) high SES students were more likely to participate in extracurricular activities than low SES children. (2) Students' social relationships in school, including supportive friendships and teacher praise, are positively associated with academic performance. (3) Participation in extracurricular activities had no direct impact on eighth grade students' academic performance or any indirect effects by structuring students' social relationships in school. Our findings suggest that extracurricular participation does not contribute to students' academic performance in a context characterised by a high-stakes testing system such as that of China. In such a context, engagement in extracurricular activities, as a way to accumulate cultural capital, may facilitate individuals' future socioeconomic success on condition that their educational success is foreseeable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools worldwide have long engaged in various forms of 'war education'. In China, an extensive 'Patriotic Education' campaign and an expanded 'National Defense Education' curriculum have led to an increase in youth-oriented military programs in the 2000s. Previous work on the implementation of these programs in Chinese schools has mostly focused on urban elite youth, while overlooking the reception of these programs by non-urban, non-elite populations. The present study addresses this issue by examining youth perceptions and experiences of military training courses in urban and rural high schools. Drawing on the analysis of Chinese publications in the 2000s and on data from field interviews with students of different backgrounds, the study finds that youth military training constitutes a contentious program. Although the Chinese government promotes the program as crucial for military strengthening and the fostering of a patriotic spirit, PRC academic and media writers provide alternative rationales for the program, which at times undermine the logic of government articulations. Meanwhile, interviews with youth document divergent attitudes and even resentment towards the program, especially among city youth. This finding casts doubt on the assumption that military-training courses necessarily contribute to the increased 'militarization' of Chinese youth and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]