Stanford University Press was having an 80% off summer sale, which was an amazing deal, so I got a bunch of books that I otherwise would never have thought to purchase since academic press prices are usually prohibitively high. Class Work is the first of the batch that I’ve read, and it was a good start. This is a slim volume that packs a lot of information about the Chinese school system and the impact of testing and government efforts to make or re-mold class structures. I prefer an ethnographic lens with a lot of examples and Woronov provides that, which makes the more theoretical parts with Foucault pass by quickly. I thought the balance between theory and example made this book pretty readable, and I found her argument very cogent and convincing.
I will say that personally, while I will read academic books like this because I am interested in the subject and this is the only way to know more, I find academic writing to often be insufferable. However, Woronov did a good job of explaining her argument and citing sources without being overly bogged down in theory. There were some bits where she kept repeating herself and I know that if I were a grad student I would have skimmed, but overall she kept the book moving. I hadn’t heard of the specific term “precariat” for the group of workers who are trapped in low-skill temp jobs, but I thought it captured that issue perfectly. I also enjoyed the look into the very under-studied group of vocational school students and Woronov paints the picture of their multiple exclusions very well. Even the group of Chinese social science grad students she presented her work to couldn’t understand why she would waste her time with the vocational students, and didn’t believe they deserved to be studied. This book shows precisely why they should be.