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<p>This paper argues that amidst changing economic fortunes and an intensification of socio-economic disparities, Chinese citizens since the 2010s have increasingly sought to self-consciously fetishize social stratification, actively misconstruing socio-economic injustices as manifestations of differences in innate gifts and genetic dispositions. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork within Inner Mongolia, northern China, amongst lower-income but academically above-average students with aspirations to attend university—as well as university-educated adults—this paper situates the fetish of hierarchies within wider social trends in contemporary Chinese life. Relying upon Marx’s discussions of fetishism in Capital <i>Vols. 1 and 3</i>, as well as the <i>Grundrisse</i>, I analyze the processes in which hierarchy is rationalized as inevitable. I demonstrate how the turn to Marx helps nuance Bourdieusian theory of misrecognition, alleviating some of the objections of his critics.</p>

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Hierarchy fetishism in an urban Chinese school

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年4月8日

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  • Edwin Hao Chen Jiang

摘要

This paper argues that amidst changing economic fortunes and an intensification of socio-economic disparities, Chinese citizens since the 2010s have increasingly sought to self-consciously fetishize social stratification, actively misconstruing socio-economic injustices as manifestations of differences in innate gifts and genetic dispositions. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork within Inner Mongolia, northern China, amongst lower-income but academically above-average students with aspirations to attend university—as well as university-educated adults—this paper situates the fetish of hierarchies within wider social trends in contemporary Chinese life. Relying upon Marx’s discussions of fetishism in Capital Vols. 1 and 3, as well as the Grundrisse, I analyze the processes in which hierarchy is rationalized as inevitable. I demonstrate how the turn to Marx helps nuance Bourdieusian theory of misrecognition, alleviating some of the objections of his critics.