Class Work

Images of Chinese teens with their heads buried in books for hours on end, preparing for high-stakes exams, dominate understandings of Chinese youth in both China and the West. But what about young people who are not on the path to academic success? What happens to youth who fail the state's high-stakes exams? What many—even in China—don't realize is that up to half of the nation's youth are flunked out of the academic education system after 9th grade. Class Work explores the consequences for youth who have failed these exams, through an examination of two urban vocational schools in Nanjing, China. Through a close look at the students' backgrounds, experiences, the schools they attend, and their trajectories into the workforce, T.E. Woronov explores the value systems in contemporary China that stigmatize youth in urban vocational schools as "failures," and the political and economic structures that funnel them into working-class futures. She argues that these marginalized students and schools provide a privileged window into the ongoing, complex intersections between the socialist and capitalist modes of production in China today and the rapid transformation of China's cities into post-industrial, service-based economies. This book advances the notion that urban vocational schools are not merely "holding tanks" for academic failures; instead they are incipient sites for the formation of a new working class.

"In this deservedly ambitious book, Woronov argues for the emergence of a new working class in China, one employed in the short-term service sector. Her powerful and rich ethnography of two vocational schools reveals nothing less than the transformation of value/s in China.", "Class Work provides deep and original insights into the 'nascent formation of a new urban working class,' which are of particular interest for scholars of labor, education, public services and social inequality in China, as well as comparative sociologists focusing on education and social stratification in developing countries.", "With immense sympathy and curiosity, Woronov untangles the economic and political structures limiting life prospects for vocational education students in China. Refusing to see 'class sorting' as a solely Chinese problem, Class Work provides a rich critique of the neoliberal human capital model linking employment and education. Woronov sensitively enters the social world of oft-ignored young people trapped in the system—a fine ethnography by a masterful writer.", "While everyone else looks the other way, Woronov draws our attention to the unglamorous experiences of millions of vocational students, who are viewed as academic and moral failures in urban China. This exemplary ethnography is full of insights into education, class formation and capitalism. It's an engaging read for anyone interested in China's complex realities and its potential futures.", "This engrossing volume makes one wonder if these young people's circumstances portend an atomized urban world to come, even as Woronov senses a new sort of class in the making. The sensitive fieldwork and perceptive reflections of this study mark it as a piece of scholarship that transcends its own subject matter, and it should attract and engage readers at various levels in the fields of anthropology, sociology, education, and political science. The book will encouragecontemplation among those who would not have imagined that studying these outcast students could carry much weight."

T.E. Woronov is Senior Lecturer of Anthropology at the University of Sydney.