Exploring collective inclusion in Chinese educational settings under neoliberal collectivism: a policy enactment perspective

This article reconsiders collective inclusion in Chinese schooling through neoliberal collectivism and policy enactment. Drawing on two ethnographic projects in a kindergarten and a primary school, we show that although national policy portrays the collective as harmonious, inclusion is conditioned by visible forms of utility. Teachers translate policy ideals into selective behavioral norms through classroom priorities, and children further reinterpret and negotiate these norms by mobilizing material and discursive resources to make themselves appear ‘useful’ to the collective. We propose an hourglass model to theorize such a multi-tiered process of policy enactment in school, with particular emphasis on children’s agency, conceptualized here as conditional creativity. The study challenges the assumption that inclusion is naturally embedded in collectivist settings, arguing that collective inclusion is conditioned by the docility-utility nexus of neoliberal collectivism. The study calls for more reflexive teacher professional training that values the multiple ways children contribute to collective life, inviting a more expansive understanding of utility than dominant classroom norms allow.