The formation of revolutionary habitus: an inquiry into the narratives of the 1966-1976 primary schoolstudents

Abstract

 This narrative study examines the consequence of the Cultural Revolution experience for the 1966-1976 primary school students, who are labeled as Little Red Guards. They retrospectively identify both gains and losses from their schooling experience during the Cultural Revolution, which contrasts with the traditional victim image of the Red Guard generation. This study focuses on the coexistence of their positive and negative voices, specifically asking how are the positive and negative voices formed in the narratives of the former Little Red Guards, and what are the perceived gains and losses over time.

The field work was conducted in Beijing in 2009 and 2010. Data was collected through oral histories and analyzed relying on the method of personal narrative analysis. Forty-nine informants participated, and twenty-six cases were selected as major data sources. Given the range in participants’ ages, selected cases are classified into three groups: 1966 senior primary school students (Group-A), 1966 junior primary school students (Group-B), and students who enrolled in primary school in the 1970s (Group-C). Furthermore, due to their subjective voices, the narratives are also divided into four sub-categories: positive, negative, neither (neither-positive-nor-negative) and both (both-positive-and-negative) voices. The oral data is presented with impressive moments, events, and episodes (at the factual level), and their reflections and self-generalizations (at the interpretative level).

Data analysis suggests that the positive and/or negative voices are closely linked with students’ past position in school, which involved three roles: activists, students with a bad label, and ordinary participants. The activists basically hold positive points due to their student leader experiences as well as the beneficial social practices they engaged in. The labeled students tend to put forward totally negative accounts because of excluded experiences, characterized by alienation, discriminations, and frustrations. The ordinary participants, on one hand, assign negative comments to the meaningless social practices they participated; on the other hand, also highlight untended positive consequences for their later life.

The findings reveal two determining themes within the diverse narratives: involvements in the political activities and participation in social practice. The two themes indicate two significantly hidden tissues: ideological awareness (IA) and practical awareness (PA).Working as the internalized predisposition, IA and PA expose the embodied history of the former Little Red Guards and a historically embedded process of their self-construction. Concerning the revolutionary context of the 1966-1976 education reform, this study combines and integrates IA and PA as constituting a revolutionary habitus (RH).The positive accounts relating to IA and PA display an elaborative meaning of RH; whereas the negative narratives concerning IA and PA demonstrate the restrictive meaning of RH. Therefore, the potential gains lie in the attainment of strong confident leadership and pragmatic social practice; while the losses refer to the formation of a pervasive sensitivity to political issues and a destructive recognition of the practical-oriented education. The finding of RH also stimulates more reflective thinking about the legacy of the 1966-1976 radical education reform, from the perspective of former Little Red Guards.