Aspiration Shaming

Leya Mathew

Faculty member, Ahmedabad University

https://ahduni.edu.in/academics/schools-centres/school-of-arts-and-sciences/faculty/leya-mathew/

In my research with non-elite mothers in India, I used the term “aspiration shaming” (Mathew, 2018) to refer to two simultaneous emergences. Unlike in the previous generation, non-elites in the post-liberalisation decades were intensely invested in formal education and aspired for mainstream educational opportunities for their children (also see Jakimow, 2016). However, the state and the established middle-classes shamed aspiring non-elites and sought to direct them to marginalized educational spaces and trajectories. This inter-connected politics of non-elite aspiring and middle-class anxieties about non-elite aspiring frames the polarised debates around English schooling, pedagogy, and policy in the country. In fact, the hegemonic fraction of the middle classes (Fernandes & Heller, 2006) reformed English language policy and pedagogy to favor socialization in English or in situ oracy practices over long-standing literacy practices (Mathew, 2022).

While aspiration may not feature so prominently in other contexts, scholars have noted similar contestations over educational practices. For instance, white parents in suburban America increasingly feel threatened by Chinese and Indian parenting styles, which are geared towards maximizing math and science practice (Warikoo, 2022). Anxieties over loss of privileged access to college education prompt white parents to lobby for less homework and more extra-curricular activities in high schools, in the name of protecting and nurturing children. In another example, Lan (2018) shows how dominant childrearing practices in Taiwan, which revolve around parental authority and child discipline, are disparaged and
subordinated to a rhetoric of children’s choice and autonomy, which reflects the experiences and resources of transnationally mobile Taiwanese families. While Asian American or Taiwanese parents are not explicitly critiqued for being aspirational, their aspirational practices are soundly condemned and picked out as requiring reform.

Across the different contexts, privileged groups strive to safeguard their children in a world where the reproduction of privilege is more risky and less predictable. They do so by advancing class-specific cultural scripts of childrearing which stigmatise others. Importantly, privileged groups institutionalise their cultural capital as child-friendly, humane, parenting. Lan (2018) describes such parental work as “security strategies.” Along with Lan, others like Anagnost et al. (2013) and Kuan (2015) draw attention to how the risks and uncertainties of social reproduction under late capitalism are reconciled or struggled with in the private space of the family at enormous emotional costs and moral striving.

References

Anagnost, A., Arai, A., & Ren, H. (Eds.). (2013). Global futures in east Asia: Youth, nation, and the new economy in uncertain times. California: Stanford University Press.

Fernandes, L., & Heller, P. (2006). Hegemonic aspirations: New middle class politics and
India’s democracy in comparative perspective. Critical Asian Studies, 38(4), 495-522.

Jakimow, T. (2016). Clinging to hope through education: The consequences of hope for rural
labourers in Telangana, India. Ethos, 44(1), 11-31.

Kuan, T. (2015). Love’s uncertainty: The politics and ethics of child rearing in contemporary
China. California: University of California Press.

Lan, P. C. (2018). Raising global families: Parenting, immigration, and class in Taiwan and
the US. California: Stanford University Press.

Mathew, L. (2018). Aspiring and aspiration shaming: Primary schooling, English, and
enduring inequalities in liberalizing Kerala (India). Anthropology & Education
Quarterly, 49(1), 72-88.

Mathew, L. (2022). English linguistic imperialism from below: Moral aspiration and social mobility Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Warikoo, N. (2022). Race at the top: Asian Americans and Whites in pursuit of the American
dream in suburban schools. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.