Abstract
This paper explores the relationship between epistemologies, tribalism and affect in the experiences of Chinese international students studying in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on data from student diaries, interviews, and focus groups, it explores how boundaries between in-groups and out-groups were erected and dismantled through processes of socio-temporal scaling, whereby social actors configured affective geographies by linking local spatial relationships to higher level (national and international) scales. The analysis reveals how negative emotions like fear of infection led to practices of spatial distancing and the drawing of cultural boundaries between groups, while feelings of worry about family members in China shaped communication patterns and information flows across geographic spaces. At times, however, positive emotions like affection and sympathy helped participants transcend boundaries, leading them to readjust their emotional mappings of the world and reevaluate their beliefs about COVID. The study highlights the central role affect and emotional labor play both in the formulation of epistemologies around health and in the drawing of boundaries between groups.
Funding source: British Academy
Award Identifier / Grant number: COV19/201470
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank all of Chinese students who participated in this project, especially our five participant-researchers.
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Research funding: The article is supported by funding from the British Academy (Grant number COV19/201470).
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© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Special Issue: Tribal Epistemologies and the discursive construction of COVID-19 knowledge; Guest Editor: Rodney H. Jones
- Disciplinary tribes and the discourse of mainstream media expert opinion articles: evidencing COVID-19 knowledge claims for a public audience
- Ways of seeing and discourse strategies of naming the novel coronavirus in the US and Hong Kong
- Who is our friend and who is our enemy? The enregisterment of tribalising digital discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic
- “By the way I want to give you some masks”: exploring multimodal stance-taking in YouTube videos
- Affective geographies and tribal epistemologies: studying abroad during COVID-19
- Editorial
- Tribal epistemologies and the discursive construction of COVID-19 knowledge
- Special Issue: Against Epistemological Theft and Appropriation; Guest Editors: Othman Z. Barnawi and Hamza R’boul
- The myopic focus on decoloniality in applied linguistics and English language education: citations and stolen subjectivities
- The bidirectionality of epistemological theft and appropriation: contrastive rhetoric in China
- Attempts at including, mediating and creating ‘new’ knowledges: problematising appropriation in intercultural communication education and research
- Epistemological theft and appropriation in qualitative inquiry in applied linguistics: lessons from Halaqa
- Can the subaltern speak in autoethnography?: knowledging through dialogic and retro/intro/pro-spective reflection to stand against epistemic violence
- The violence of literature review and the imperative to ask new questions
- Editorial
- Against epistemological theft and appropriation in applied linguistics research
- Special Issue: Art as social practice: language and marginality; Guest Editors: Roberta Piazza, Birgul Yilmaz and Charlotte Taylor
- ‘Art as social practice: language and marginality’: Special Issue of Applied Linguistics Review
- Objects are not just a thing – (re)negotiating identity through using material objects within the Kurdish diaspora in the UK
- “I am surprised they have allowed you in here to do this”: women’s prison writing as heterotopic space of narrative inclusion
- Walking with: understandings and negotiations of the mundane in research
- Translanguaging art – Questioning boundaries in Monika Szydłowska’s Do you miss your country?
- Reinventing the self through participatory art: writing and performing among rough sleepers
- Research Articles
- Expectation-practice discrepancies: a transcultural exploration of Chinese students’ oral discourse socialization in German academia
- Perceived teacher feedback practices, student feedback motivation and engagement in English learning: a survey of Chinese university students
- Incidental vocabulary learning from listening, reading, and viewing captioned videos: frequency and prior vocabulary knowledge
- A longitudinal study on lecture listening difficulties and self-regulated learning strategies across different proficiency levels in EMI higher education
- Secondary students’ L2 writing motivation and engagement: the impact of teachers’ instructional approaches and feedback practices
- Marked on the voice: the visibility experiences of Russian heritage migrants following the war against Ukraine
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Special Issue: Tribal Epistemologies and the discursive construction of COVID-19 knowledge; Guest Editor: Rodney H. Jones
- Disciplinary tribes and the discourse of mainstream media expert opinion articles: evidencing COVID-19 knowledge claims for a public audience
- Ways of seeing and discourse strategies of naming the novel coronavirus in the US and Hong Kong
- Who is our friend and who is our enemy? The enregisterment of tribalising digital discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic
- “By the way I want to give you some masks”: exploring multimodal stance-taking in YouTube videos
- Affective geographies and tribal epistemologies: studying abroad during COVID-19
- Editorial
- Tribal epistemologies and the discursive construction of COVID-19 knowledge
- Special Issue: Against Epistemological Theft and Appropriation; Guest Editors: Othman Z. Barnawi and Hamza R’boul
- The myopic focus on decoloniality in applied linguistics and English language education: citations and stolen subjectivities
- The bidirectionality of epistemological theft and appropriation: contrastive rhetoric in China
- Attempts at including, mediating and creating ‘new’ knowledges: problematising appropriation in intercultural communication education and research
- Epistemological theft and appropriation in qualitative inquiry in applied linguistics: lessons from Halaqa
- Can the subaltern speak in autoethnography?: knowledging through dialogic and retro/intro/pro-spective reflection to stand against epistemic violence
- The violence of literature review and the imperative to ask new questions
- Editorial
- Against epistemological theft and appropriation in applied linguistics research
- Special Issue: Art as social practice: language and marginality; Guest Editors: Roberta Piazza, Birgul Yilmaz and Charlotte Taylor
- ‘Art as social practice: language and marginality’: Special Issue of Applied Linguistics Review
- Objects are not just a thing – (re)negotiating identity through using material objects within the Kurdish diaspora in the UK
- “I am surprised they have allowed you in here to do this”: women’s prison writing as heterotopic space of narrative inclusion
- Walking with: understandings and negotiations of the mundane in research
- Translanguaging art – Questioning boundaries in Monika Szydłowska’s Do you miss your country?
- Reinventing the self through participatory art: writing and performing among rough sleepers
- Research Articles
- Expectation-practice discrepancies: a transcultural exploration of Chinese students’ oral discourse socialization in German academia
- Perceived teacher feedback practices, student feedback motivation and engagement in English learning: a survey of Chinese university students
- Incidental vocabulary learning from listening, reading, and viewing captioned videos: frequency and prior vocabulary knowledge
- A longitudinal study on lecture listening difficulties and self-regulated learning strategies across different proficiency levels in EMI higher education
- Secondary students’ L2 writing motivation and engagement: the impact of teachers’ instructional approaches and feedback practices
- Marked on the voice: the visibility experiences of Russian heritage migrants following the war against Ukraine