Abstract

1.1 Context and Research Question

This research conceptualizes the Chinese County High School (CHS) as a field defined by high-stakes testing (HST), where the pressure of the Gaokao “increases the competitive nature of the educational system” (Zwier et al., 2021). This field is seen as being governed by an “affective economy” (Ahmed, 2004), where students’ emotions such as anxiety, shame, and collective fervor are systematically produced and circulated to align their subjectivities with institutional goals.

Rural students who enter this field with competitive test scores often embody a primary habitus rooted in utilitarian pragmatism and a moralized belief in effort as a survival instinct. Nevertheless, the CHS’s affective economy intends to cultivate students to gain a secondary habitus—one that transforms their raw survival instincts into abstract, meritocratic feeling rules and an alienated obsession with social hierarchy.

To reconcile their primary habitus with the institutional logic, students learn to mobilize resources. This study focuses on how varying configurations of emotional capital and digital capital act as mediating tools in this struggle. We ask: How do rural students mobilize emotional and digital capitals to respond to the affective governance of the high-stakes testing field, and how does this process result in divergent forms of habitus clivé?

1.2 Theoretical Framework

This study employs Bourdieu’s (1984, 1990) triad of field, capital, and habitus to analyze how institutional structures reshape subjective dispositions. We focus on the tension between a student’s primary habitus—the embodied dispositions acquired from their rural upbringing—and the secondary habitus developed by the high-stakes testing field. When the school’s competitive logic contradicts the student’s original background, a habitus clivé (cleft habitus) or “ontological incoherence” (Bennett, 2007) emerges.

We redefine this testing field as an “affective economy” (Ahmed, 2004), where emotions like anxiety and shame are “produced, circulated and capitalized on” to ensure academic productivity (Zembylas, 2007, p.458). In this field, the school imposes strict “feeling rules” to govern student subjectivities. Consequently, rural students often engage in “chameleoning” (Keane, 2023)—a performative adaptation to reconcile the split between their past selves and institutional expectations.

To navigate this affective governance, students mobilize emotional and digital capitals. Drawing on Cottingham (2016), we argue that while primary emotional capital is tied to one’s background, secondary emotional capital can be actively acquired to foster “emotional reflexivity”—the ability to distance oneself from institutional pressure.

Crucially, digital capital (Verwiebe & Hagemann, 2024) affects the success of this reflexivity. Instead of a simple tool, digital capital acts as a gatekeeper to external resources: it either provides a “reflexive bridge” to alternative value systems that buffer school pressure (as seen in Student A), or it functions as an “echo chamber” that amplifies academic anxiety (as seen in Student B). Thus, the divergence in habitus clivé is produced by the different modes of mobilizing the two capitals.

1.3 Findings

The research identifies two distinct trajectories of secondary habitus formation and the resulting habitus clivé:

The Detached Stranger (Student A): By mobilizing digital capital to access alternative values, Student A accumulated secondary emotional capital. This fostered “emotional reflexivity” (Cottingham, 2016, p. 464), allowing her to treat the school’s logic as an external game. Her shift from alignment to resistance resulted in a calculated habitus clivé, where academic success is coupled with profound alienation and “chameleoning” (Keane, 2023).

The Compromised Stranger (Student B): Lacking digital resources to buffer institutional pressure, Student B internalized the school’s meritocratic hierarchy. His trajectory moved from initial resistance to total adherence. This led to a “paralyzed habitus clivé” and “emotional bankruptcy”: he devalued his rural origins but failed to achieve upward mobility, remaining trapped in a persistent sense of failure.

Methodology 2.1 Research Design This research employs a qualitative case study design to explore how institutional power is translated into subjective emotional states. The County High School (CHS) in China was selected as it represents a field where the pressures of high-stakes testing (HST) and competitive atmosphere are most intensely concentrated. In the Chinese context, the CHS is a place that amplifies the social and emotional stakes of the Gaokao, making it an ideal field to observe the circulation of affect and the restructuring of student dispositions. 2.2 Participants and Data Collection The study focuses on two rural students who represent polarized adaptation modes within the same structural environment. Student A is a top-performing student whose parents provided a stable environment but high expectations; Student B entered the school with lower scores through a “high-fee” policy, carrying the heavy burden of his parents’ financial sacrifice. They were chosen because their divergent academic positions and family pressures provide a rich comparison of how different students navigate the same game rules. Data were collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews over several months, focusing on their feelings regarding score rankings, motivational rallies, and their use of digital media. 2.3 Analytical Framework The analysis is grounded in a Bourdieuian relational power framework, tracing the interaction between: Field Mechanism: How the school operates as a field governed by an affective economy , extracting students’ scores through the production and circulation of their shame and anxiety. Capitals Mobilization: How students deploy both digital capital and emotional capital to manage their internal state. Habitus Transformation: How the struggle between the primary habitus (rural upbringing) and the secondary habitus (meritocratic adherence) results in different forms of habitus clivé. 2.4 Limitations Due to the small sample size, this study does not aim to provide a statistical generalization of all rural students. Instead, it offers theoretical generalizability, refining how we understand the hidden injuries of high-stakes testing and the role of digital resources in emotional survival within a specific, high-pressure cultural context.

Conclusions This study analyzed the contrasting trajectories of two rural students in a high-stakes testing field, revealing that habitus clivé is a dynamic structural outcome produced by the friction between a student’s primary background and the school’s affective economy. The findings suggest that the school is a site of affective governance, where “emotion norms” define what beliefs and actions are legitimate (Zembylas, 2007). Student A’s shift from compliance to resistance and Student B’s shift from detachment to compromise demonstrate that adaptation is a resource-based struggle. Student A used digital capital to gain alternative values, which she then converted into secondary emotional capital. This enabled her to exercise emotional reflexivity and maintain a “detached” survival. In contrast, Student B, lacking both the digital means to access external support and the emotional capital to buffer institutional mechanism, was consumed by the school’s competitive ethos. His lack of mediating capital led to a state of emotional bankruptcy, where he could no longer return to his rural past. This research contributes to the affective turn in Bourdieuian sociology by demonstrating that digital capital and emotional capital are deeply intertwined in the process of habitus formation. It argues that digital access is a vital prerequisite for emotional reflexivity, providing the symbolic materials necessary to resist affective governance. Ultimately, the study reveals that in high-stakes testing regimes, inequality is not only academic or economic but ontological—there is an inequality in the capacity to maintain a coherent self amidst structural violence. Future studies could elaborate how the affective economy of schools interacts with the labor market. As the promise of social mobility through testing becomes more uncertain, the emotional costs for rural students inhabiting these divided habituses deserve further longitudinal investigation to see how these hidden injuries affect their long-term career development and well-being.

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