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Becoming Role Models: Pedagogies of Soft Skills and Affordances of Person-Making in Contemporary China
Ethos ( IF 0.6 ) Pub Date : 2021-07-09 , DOI: 10.1111/etho.12305 Gil Hizi 1
Ethos ( IF 0.6 ) Pub Date : 2021-07-09 , DOI: 10.1111/etho.12305 Gil Hizi 1
Affiliation
This article looks at the market-driven globalization of pedagogies of interpersonal “soft” skills by depicting these practices’ microdynamics and phenomenological attributes. My case study is located in urban China, where expertise and practices of soft skills have recently become accessible to people of different social backgrounds. Drawing on participant observations in relevant workshops in a second-tier city, I describe interactive dynamics where participants express themselves in new ways and, in turn, envision possibilities for changing their personalities and social standing. This process characterizes a globally expansive apparatus, which in China takes the particular form of role-modeling interactions where participants transition from learners to “exemplars.” “Self-improvement” through these pedagogies tends to emerge as moments of perceived affordances for self-transformation, activated through the synergy of seemingly accessible bodily capacities and the configuration of valuable “skills.”
更新日期：2021-07-09
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