UNCERTAINTY IN CULTURAL REPRODUCTION

I am deeply interested in disruptions and uncertainties that occur as teachers and parents attempt to transmit cultural and educational advantages to children. My dissertation follows 42 Taiwanese high school students, unveiling the anxieties and uncertainties they face following the implementation of new cultural screening and whole-person assessment processes by universities. How do individuals leverage cultural assets to secure university admissions in the face of ambiguous and uncertain standards? How do they mobilize resources to transform uncertainty into opportunity? Do middle-class students possess more effective “plan Bs” when their initial plans prove unattainable? My findings suggest that speculating about the future emerges as a novel class strategy, transforming uncertainty into a competitive edge.

STRATIFICATION IN EAST ASIA

I also examine, at a societal level, how individuals respond to the imposition of Western talent standards within East Asian contexts. In a collaborative, comparative work, I employ interviews from students and evaluators (teachers and professors) to understand whether they fully embrace the new ways of judging—assessing people’s non-test performance and embodied forms of orals and writing styles. I find that testing scores are still the primary merit that people search for. Yet, when candidates’ scores are hard to differentiate, holistic screening becomes a supplemental indicator of merit in social selection. These works unveil the relative powers between types of merits in East Asia contexts.