Research

UNCERTAINTY IN CULTURAL REPRODUCTION

Facing contingency and uncertainty, how do privileged groups transfer their advantages to their children to secure positions and power? My dissertation follows 42 Taiwanese high school students navigating college transitions, where the rules have shifted and redefined what counts as merit, and how it is measured. My findings reveal three key insights:

  1. Cultural reproduction is uncertain, with many “less-sticky moments” that disrupt the transmission of advantage.
  2. Yet, class disparities in higher education persist, not because the privileged smoothly pass on advantages, but because they leverage resources into “plan Bs” when “plan A” falls short.
  3. Instead of focusing on involvement, we should trace “intervention” to see how parents and teachers—two socializing agents—collaborate or contest one another in shaping students’ life courses, as one’s influence can diminish the other’s.

2020 “Pathways to College Admissions: Student Strategies and Class Variations in Activating Cultural Knowledge in Taiwan.” International Studies in Sociology of Education, 31:3, 284-304. See [PDF]

“A Paper on College Information and Students’ College Plans.” (Anonymized Title Under Review)

“Classed Signaling, Disciplinary Fit: Adaptive Cultural Capital and Students’ College Entry into Heterogeneous Fields.”

TRANSFORMATIVE MERITOCRACY AND CREDENTIALISM IN EAST ASIA

I also explore how, at a societal level, actors respond to the imposition and localization of Western talent standards in East Asian contexts. In a special issue, I examine how Taiwanese students and evaluators (teachers and professors) navigate between two types of merit when determining who is more talented and deserving of recognition. Additionally, I investigate how degree holders perceive their status and distinction in the context of universal higher education, where everyone holds a degree yet competes to establish qualitative differences. Below are my insights from two pieces of writing:

Forthcoming, “Out of the Old, In with the New: Perceptions of Merit in Taiwan’s Holistic Admissions Reforms” (The Journal of Asian Studies, published by Duke University Press)

“A Paper on Digitalization of Credentials.” (Anonymized Title Under Review)

MIXING ETHNOGRAPHY WITH OTHER METHODS

How do ethnographers adapt to the new normal when physical and digital worlds constantly intertwine in social life? I propose what I call “hybrid ethnography” as a toolkit, highlighting how multi-access, multi-positioning, and online-offline data assembly can help us study the social world. Following my idea of mixed methods, I am currently exploring how we can use AI auto-coding, promptbooks, and individual human coders to conduct qualitative analyses.

2022 “Hybrid Ethnography: Access, Positioning, and Data Assembly,” Ethnography, Online First, See [PDF] *The most cited paper in Ethnography over past three years.

From Promptbook to Codebook: Meaning-Making and Categorizing in AI-Assisted Qualitative Analyses (In Discussion).

PUBLIC WRITING IN MANDARIN

If you’re interested in my public writing on how the youth self-governed themselves in a free school, you can explore my award-winning book in Mandarin:

2015 “Let the Timber Creek: An Alternative School’s Utopia for Coming Generations. New Taipei City, Taiwan: Acropolis.” See English Table of Content.