Category Insights

The second part of the article seeks to understand the side of the Chinese youth specifically students- who "call attention to issues" that require states to change their behaviour by "carving in external pressure" to conform. There are "critical junctures" in every norm cycle- comprising of norm emergence, diffusion and internalisation- where an entrenched norm can be uprooted and replaced and China is clearly heading towards one (Bloomfield, 2016) - The question remains whether the youth will seize it or continue living in the permanent liminality of living on the limit despite being at the gate of social reaggregation because crises have the ability to break down roles and overturn culturally sanctioned functions and relations. (Mälksoo, 2012). Involution and Laying Flat is examined by looking at it in the field of education, as the critical juncture.

With the actions of the Chinese state, one can understand how misplacement is so deeply internalised as a matter of routine and daily life but can be sought to be navigated through the counternorm of Laying Flat. The article seeks to understand involution in China as an international norm and its unique trends and external influences impacting her historically and presently misplaced identity.