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Introduction: understanding the re-articulations of privilege over time and space
Globalisation, Societies and Education
Abstract
This special issue is based entirely on the research project called ‘Elite independent schools in globalising circumstances: a multi-sited global ethnography' and this opening essay introduces both the project and the essays to follow. It offers a justification for studying elite schools, elites and elitism and explains some of the project's guiding premises not the least being its deliberate departure from those studies of elite schools that are nation bound. It clarifies the project's emphasis on the complexities of elite formation and expression as they are caught up in changing modalities of globalisation over time and place.
... To respond to the increasing diversity of student populations, intercultural education, critical/multicultural education, and global/citizenship education have received considerable scholarly attention. A review of the literature in these areas suggests that students and teachers need to interact effectively with people they view as different from themselves and to embody a critical perspective that can transform global and local oppression and reduce inequity in schools (e.g., Banks, 2004a, b;Banks, 2009;May, 2009;McCarthy & Kenway, 2014;Sleeter, 2014). This paper uses multicultural education as an umbrella term for intercultural education, critical/multicultural education and global/citizenship education. ...
... We would like to highlight that when the teachers said they treat the class as individuals or according to their skill levels, instead of looking at their ethnic/cultural backgrounds and interests, they may further contribute to the diminishing of cultural understanding and dialogue in the school. As a result, these "indifferent discourses" reminded us of the importance of raising teachers' cultural awareness and understanding of Chinese students, which resonates with the literature that promotes multicultural education in schooling (e.g., Banks, 2004a, b;Banks, 2009;May, 2009;McCarthy & Kenway, 2014;Sleeter, 2014). Perhaps not surprising is that the teachers in both schools highlighted that the Chinese students and their parents are overly concerned with being 'successful' in HPE, meaning getting the highest marks in the subject. ...
... Two examples, which are more directly related to the theme of this chapter, include the examination of the relationship between socio-economic class, alumni and status. This topic was the subject of studies into a Barbadian case study(Greenhalgh-Spencer, 2015), as well as a series of publications that were the outcomes of a major Australian research project into the connections between historically independent schools and their alumni:Kenway and Fahey (2014);Kenway and Koh (2013);Koh and Kenway (2012, 2016);McCarthy and Kenway (2014); and Fahey, Prosser and Shaw (2015). ...
For countries in Asia that were once part of the British Empire, one of the more singular outcomes of contemporary globalisation has been an increase in emigration to other parts of the former Empire, such as Australia and the UK. This transnational movement has been both temporary and permanent, often in the initial context of migration for tertiary education rather than school education. Consequently, the role of alumni in helping to facilitate these transnational movements has tended to focus on the position of university and related alumni connections. Using examples from India and Sri Lanka, this chapter highlights that, as a result, there are gaps in the research canon concerning the possible roles played by school alumni associations as drivers of transnational migration and facilitators of migrant adjustment that offer researchers unexplored lines of inquiry.
... Recent scholarship on the globalising practices of elite schools (Forbes & Lingard, 2015;Kenway & Fahey, 2014;McCarthy & Kenway, 2014) is particularly relevant for this paper. Elite schools across the globe are rapidly re-orienting to prepare their students for global opportunities, and are in some ways being reshaped by new global dynamics and pressures. ...
Despite decades of policies to widen participation in medical degrees, students selected for Medicine continue to reflect a socially elite group, rather than the diversity of the communities that graduates will serve. While research has documented experiences of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, this paper examines the “cultures of success” that enable advantaged students to gain entry to medical school. It documents how these students’ school and home environments enable the development and realisation of “aspirational capacity”. Aspirational capacity is not just about having a dream, but also the resources and knowledge to realise one’s dream. The paper also examines a negative side of a narrow aspirational focus. “Aspirational constriction” describes the premature foreclosure of career ambitions, which can have negative implications for both the students and for society, and for less advantaged students, who are effectively excluded from degrees such as Medicine.
... Additional language learning, in general, has proven an object of desire to the Brazilian elites-likely due to globalising circumstances (McCarthy & Kenway, 2014), which affect educational provision, and are to be understood as encompassing newly constructed intersections between the global knowledge economy, neoliberal policies and practices, and the ways in which differentially positioned groups in differentially positioned nations are able and, in some cases, explicitly willing to connect with these externalities. (Weis, 2014, p. 310) More specifically, access to bilingualism (English-Portuguese) through CLIL, as offered by these SE, is highly aspirational in our context because not only is CLIL advertised as the ultimate solution to FLBE, English is a cultural product of great value and a strong commodity (Guilherme, 2007;Jordão, 2004). ...
This edited book offers culturally-situated, critical accounts of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approaches in diverse educational settings, showcasing authentic examples of how CLIL can be applied to different educational levels from primary to tertiary. The contributors offer a research-based, critical view of CLIL opportunities, challenges and implications in the following areas: teacher education, continuing professional development, assessment, teacher-student dialogue, translanguaging, coursebooks, bilingual education, authenticity, language development and thinking skills. This wide-ranging volume will appeal to students and scholars of English Language Teaching (ELT), language policy and planning, bi- and multilingualism, and applied linguistics more broadly.
Chantal Hemmi is an Associate Professor at Sophia University, Japan.
Darío Luis Banegas is a Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde and an Associate Fellow at the University of Warwick, UK.
... Additional language learning, in general, has proven an object of desire to the Brazilian elites-likely due to globalising circumstances (McCarthy & Kenway, 2014), which affect educational provision, and are to be understood as encompassing newly constructed intersections between the global knowledge economy, neoliberal policies and practices, and the ways in which differentially positioned groups in differentially positioned nations are able and, in some cases, explicitly willing to connect with these externalities. (Weis, 2014, p. 310) More specifically, access to bilingualism (English-Portuguese) through CLIL, as offered by these SE, is highly aspirational in our context because not only is CLIL advertised as the ultimate solution to FLBE, English is a cultural product of great value and a strong commodity (Guilherme, 2007;Jordão, 2004). ...
The aim of this chapter is to bring together the main features that CLIL has acquired in practice in different settings. Drawing on the 12 contributor chapters, in this chapter we first discuss the contexts in which CLIL has been implemented. Second, we reflect on the lessons learnt that each chapter includes according to two areas: (1) CLIL practices and (2) CLIL professional development and awareness. Last, we discuss the way forward drawing on the implications and engagement priorities that the contributors have posed at the end of their chapters. The chapter encourages colleagues to share how CLIL models have been localised in different contexts and how they are developed in their own right without the need to compare them to dominant conceptualisations of CLIL.
... Recent studies have unsettled this implicit consensus on historical prestige as an indicator of elite status for schools. With the rise of the private for-profit sector and the growing popularity of international schools, historically established schools may struggle to maintain their leading positions (McCarthy and Kenway 2014;Rivzi 2014). Further, analyses of the field of power or quantitative studies of elite pathways are no longer considered prerequisites in the construction of the research object. ...
This chapter reports on a study conducted in Ireland, a country where despite staggering social inequalities, conversations on class and elites are scarce. Based on a study of the Who’s Who, school fees and data on progression to university, and taking into account the historical, cultural and geographical context, it proposes a flexible typology of private schools in Ireland. In contrast with the Swedish case presented in this section, data on the socio-economic profile of students is not publicly available. In addition, due to local specificities, the criteria established by researchers in the UK and US contexts to separate out elite schools from other private institutions are not directly applicable. While acknowledging the importance of global perspectives and methodologies in research on elite education, the chapter makes the case for establishing fine-grained criteria that account for local specificities and rapid changes in the field.
... Recent studies have unsettled this implicit consensus on historical prestige as an indicator of elite status for schools. With the rise of the private for-profit sector and the growing popularity of international schools, historically established schools may struggle to maintain their leading positions (McCarthy and Kenway 2014;Rivzi 2014). Further, analyses of the field of power or quantitative studies of elite pathways are no longer considered prerequisites in the construction of the research object. ...
This open access book describes how elite studies theoretically and methodologically construct their object, i.e. how particular conceptualizations of elites are turned into research practice using different methods for collecting, dealing with and analyzing empirical data. The first of four sections focuses on what Mills named the power elite and includes Bourdieu’s field of power. The second section addresses studies of the domain of economic power, whereas the third section centers on research on elite education. The fourth and last section highlights research on symbolic power, either within social fields or as a dimension of social structure at large, areas where recognition is essential. All sections comprise empirical case studies of elites and power, whereby each of which makes explicit the various methodological choices made in the research process. Through focusing on methodological approaches for the study of elites and power and on how such approaches relate to each other as well as to the theoretical perspectives that underpin them, this book will be a valuable source for social scientists.
... Recent studies have unsettled this implicit consensus on historical prestige as an indicator of elite status for schools. With the rise of the private for-profit sector and the growing popularity of international schools, historically established schools may struggle to maintain their leading positions (McCarthy and Kenway 2014;Rivzi 2014). Further, analyses of the field of power or quantitative studies of elite pathways are no longer considered prerequisites in the construction of the research object. ...
This study investigates the impact of political connections on government contract success rates of publicly listed companies in Canada (2010–2014). It illustrates how public information, basic financial accounting and Two-Stages Least Squares (2SLS) estimation can be used to analyse the power plays between public authorities and large corporations. The results show that political connections are frequent among publicly listed Canadian companies. While weak, these connections are positively and significantly associated with the winning of government contracts. Our study is the first to demonstrate a direct relationship between corporate political connections and government contracts in the Canadian context. The study confirms the interdependence between politics and business, particularly the increase in the number of corporate actions intended to influence government decisions. Its robust results call for more studies on what board members with political credentials actually do, on top of securing public contracts.
... Thus, in some ways, the internationalisation of higher education comes with risks. In particular, it creates new forms of stratification between institutions, and allows the more privileged students to benefit from a market (or quasi-market) situation (Atherton, 2013;McCarthy and Kenway, 2014). This is the case for sending countries such as China (Kim, 2015) but is true as well for students from receiving countries such as the UK (Brookes and Waters, 2009). ...
... Although, increasingly, internationalisation of education has been a focus of study (Brooks and Waters 2011;Resnik 2012;King et al. 2013;McCarthy and Kenway 2014), there remain important gaps in this work. The first is the need to pay more careful attention to the theoretical frameworks being engaged with, how this shapes the kind of research undertaken, and the ways findings are interpreted. ...
This book offers both a theoretical and empirical examination of elite education, at all stages from the early years to university level. The book explores the various manifestations of internationalisation of education; the implications of these for national education systems; the formation and re-articulation of elite forms of education locally and globally; and how these facilitate the reproduction or disruption of processes of inequality. The collection critically considers these questions by drawing on contributions from around the world, and focuses on how internationalisation processes shape the various stages of the education system – from early years settings to higher education – in oftentimes quite different ways. At the same time, by engaging with the issues through a range of theoretical lenses, the book invites readers to consider in greater depth the various ways we can come to understand how processes of internationalisation are both embedding but also at times destabilising the formation and purpose of elite education provision and potentially the configuration of elite groups themselves. The book will be relevant to academics, researchers, students, policymakers and educators working in or on the field of ‘education’ across the world.
... Although, increasingly, internationalisation of education has been a focus of study (Brooks and Waters 2011;Resnik 2012;King et al. 2013;McCarthy and Kenway 2014), there remain important gaps in this work. The first is the need to pay more careful attention to the theoretical frameworks being engaged with, how this shapes the kind of research undertaken, and the ways findings are interpreted. ...
Processes of internationalisation are increasingly recognised as central to the study of education. Most of the research emphasises the importance of global education policy initiatives and forms of accountability, the exponential growth of edu-businesses, the increasing transnational movement of capital and people, and how this has led to increased international patterns of mobility for education. Meanwhile, research and theorisation around elite education has experienced a resurgence in recent years. Increasingly, this latter work takes up the importance of internationalisation in shaping what constitutes an elite education—what is sought after in terms of an education and aspired to in terms of future destinations.This introduction chapter provides a brief overview of the key literature on internationalisation and elite education, and sketches out the research agenda this edited collection seeks to engage with. Critically, we focus on how uneven patterns of influence of internationalisation appear to be across different national contexts, as well as across the various phases of education. We argue that taking a focus across education phases is central to understanding how elite education is inter-linked and shapes access into elite positions later on in life. The chapter also offers a clarification of the key terms and theoretical concepts drawn on when discussing internationalisation practices within education, and the different theoretical influences relevant to such examinations. Finally, we provide an overview of the contributions in this edited volume.
... Yet despite the considerable growth and diversification in high school IET, the subject is under-researched in terms of its scope and specific nature (Campbell-Price, 2014;Stone & Petrick, 2013). Research into the impacts of international educational travel has tended to concentrate on university student mobility, in contrast, studies on the effects of IET on high school learners is a newly emerging field (Kenway & Fahey, 2014;McCarthy & Kenway, 2014). Similarly, analysis of the concept of global learning and how educators can best nurture it in school children is a developing theme in the fields of geography education and global citizenship education (e.g: B eneker, Tani, Uphues, & van der Vaart, 2013;Choo, Sawech & Villanueva, 2012;DeMello, 2011;Merryfield, 2012). ...
International educational tourism has the potential to foster global learning; however, very little empirical research exists to support this claim. This study responds to the growing demand in the literature for rigorous empirical research to test the underpinning assumption of IET. A global learning survey instrument is developed and completed by 1152 Grade 11 learners in 16 South African exclusive high schools. In doing so, this paper demonstrates that some types of IET are more conducive to global learning than others. Furthermore, for significant global learning to occur, educational tourism needs to be facilitated and cultural difference needs to be experienced.
Personality traits that include curiosity, altruism, and being open-minded to new experiences, are identified as predictors of global learning, but the effect of school-based academic achievement is small.
Additionally, through the synthesis of educational tourism, international education, experiential learning and global learning theories, the concept of IET is developed.
... The framework he offers is a useful one and, reflecting on many of the schools discussed in recent work by McCarthy and Kenway (2014) and colleagues, Allan and Charles (2014), Maxwell and Aggleton (2013;2014b), Sandgren (2014), Forbes and Weiner (2008), these criteria capture many of the defining features others have observed. Gaztambide-Fernández (2009b) acknowledges, however, that whether and how a particular school is characterised in terms of one or more of these dimensions are often matters for debate. ...
Drawing on findings from a longitudinal study of four private schools in one geographical area in England, this paper seeks to extend understandings of how these schools differentially seek to position themselves as 'elite'. Findings highlight the continuing legacy of the Great Schools (private boarding-schools) of 18th and 19th century England in shaping contemporary and modern-day practices. An emphasis on academic excellence and the development of the whole person could be found in each of the schools studied. However, the increasingly competitive (global) education market means that individual schools must actively re-interpret these elite markers to engage more directly with the social group fractions they see as comprising their core recruitment constituencies. © Presses Universitaires de France. Tous Droits Réservés Pour Tous Pays.
... Despite a globally-connected economy, with London viewed as one of the finance capitals of the world with a large, multicultural population (a global city -Sassen, 2012), the concept of an English, traditional public (i.e. private) school education is still held-up as an ideal to pursue (Brooks and Waters, 2014;McCarthy and Kenway, 2014;Sandgren, 2014). In our study, globally mobile parents appeared to view an English public school education as a necessity for their own children, despite reputable international schools being available locally. ...
This article examines the ways in which cosmopolitanism is imagined and planned for by 91 young women attending four private (elite) schools in one area of England. Despite many study participants coming from families where parents travelled internationally for business, few had a strong desire to reproduce such orientations in their own futures. Moreover, the elite schools attended placed relatively little emphasis on cosmopolitanism and transnationally mobile futures. For the few English young women doing the International Baccalaureate and/or actively considering higher education abroad, the decision to do so was driven by individual rather than family or social ambitions. Through our analysis we consider further whether cosmopolitanism is a form of (cultural) capital or a quality more embedded within the girls’ habitus. The relatively ambivalent attitude to cosmopolitanism found in the study schools ties in to an ethnocentrism which sees an ‘English education’ as among the most prestigious in the world.
Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of the competition for economic, social and cultural capitals within educational fields, this article reports empirical research from 49 in-depth interviews with graduate students at four elite universities in the USA and the UK. It argues the brands of elite global universities work to reproduce social and cultural capital for a small cohort of elite students, and by doing so perpetuate and reinforce systems that privilege a select few. By drawing upon student narratives, our findings demonstrate the cosmopolitan nature of elite university brands. These ‘Cosmopolitan Brands’ are immersed in local and highly exclusive practices which reinforce wider inequalities of social class. We explore how individual students navigate their immersion and positioning within the brands of global elite universities; competing first as students at university before progressing to compete for power and status within global economies.
In recent years, Brazil has embraced the CLIL approach given its dual focus on content and language learning. In the context’s current landscape, the locally called Education Systems (ES) have played an important and sometimes controversial role in CLIL developments, as a considerable number of schools turn to them to implement foreign language bilingual education (FLBE) programmes. The concept behind ES encompasses solutions offered by major educational conglomerates, which come in the form of consultancy services, teacher training, didactic series, and packages of materials to be used by the partners in a subscription type of agreement. In this chapter, through a critical analysis of ES’ websites and advertising campaigns, we discuss how CLIL has been introduced by these ES in order to locally consolidate a global trend of CLIL implementation.
Drawing on a multi-sited global ethnography of elite schools, this article explores how these institutions work to produce subjects that will thrive in a globalized world. We examine how despite a similar commitment to global citizenship education and a cosmopolitan orientation across all schools, the intersections between the transnational and national sphere continue to shape the specific futures students are being prepared for. Thus, while all schools understand cosmopolitanism as being acquired by working across difference and having international mobility experiences, the specificities of the national socio-economic contexts and the founding principles of each institution, shapes the kinds of ‘leaders’ being formed, which in turn differentiates the specific cosmopolitan practices being promoted. Ultimately, these elite institutions are seeking to create an elite class by conferring a cosmopolitan status on their students which will have direct convertibility for the specific futures being envisioned for them.
Drawing on a multi-sited global ethnography of elite schools across the world, this article explores how elite schools prepare students for an increasingly interconnected world characterised by difference and competition through global citizenship education. In this exploration, I identify the four domains that give meaning to global citizenship education within elite contexts: cultural, relational, emotional, and material. These domains reveal the ways in which these schools are responding to the challenges of globalisation by providing students opportunities to develop awareness and knowledge of differences, to establish and maintain relationships across differences, to gain a sense of obligation towards others, and to accumulate valuable forms of human and cultural capital. Through globally-oriented practices, students are being prepared to be flexibly mobile, to imagine themselves as leaders within a globalised world and to thrive in the hypercompetitive and unpredictable global knowledge economy. These practices play an important part of elite schools’ larger strategy of making and remaking elites.
The well-established yet under-theorised body of ‘Traditional International Schools’ warrant much greater sociological analysis and inquiry as ‘elite’ educational institutions. This paper uses Basil Bernstein’s Sociology of the School to discuss the ‘expressive culture’ of such schools, representing an idealised model of conduct, character and manner. The role of rituals in transmitting this culture is discussed by applying Randall Collins’ Interaction Ritual Chain Theory showing how every-day festivals and fundraising events (commonly conceptualised as forming the ‘Five Fs’) can help build up positive emotional energy, which can be used to facilitate action, and embed the expressive culture. Maurice Halbwachs’ concept of Collective Memory is then used to show how interaction rituals can deliver a permanent group recollection, essential for enduring class solidarity and cohesion. Overall, an introductory and coherent theoretical framework for identifying a Sociology of International Schoolingis presented, focusing on what aspects of the schooling experience makmakes it an attractive and elite, privileged one.
Higher Education policy researchers have highlighted the link between merit and privileged social background with respect to who is most likely to win merit-based scholarships in Universities. Yet little is known about how students from various social backgrounds may inhabit such a scholarship. In this paper, we draw on theorisations of the relationship between meritocracy and justice in order to analyse the subjective work of several undergraduate students who are positioned as winners in a meritocracy, due to being recipients of a generous merit-based scholarship. We explore the different techniques these students use to justify their access to privilege, unpacking their notions of justice, and consider them in relation to their social backgrounds. We argue that recognising their distinct constructions of merit and justice can help advance understanding of how the logics of meritocracy are (re)made in the context of University merit scholarships.
This article employs the concept of ‘everyday multiculturalism’ to examine what students at an elite school in Australia are taught about working with and across difference through global citizenship education within a single-sex classroom model. The authors explore the ways in which larger social cohesion agendas are reinforced through the meanings and practices of global citizenship education to facilitate increased interactions between different groups around a set of shared values and common practices. The authors illustrate how this approach to global citizenship education and the school’s single-sex classroom model both maintain racial, ethnic and gendered divisions within the student body. Within this schooling context, students are not provided the kinds of instructional spaces that promote interdependence and habitual engagement necessary for productively working with and across difference.
This article is based on a multi-site study of teachers in elite private schools in Australia. Teachers’ accounts from this study bring nuance to the reasons one might short-handedly expect they have in working for these exclusive institutions. It is not that everyday motivations don’t matter, for example, the financial compensations, the beautiful grounds and the status payoffs, but that teachers bring their own discourses, histories and intentions to bear on the contradictions of their work-lives. This is crucial evidence for understanding how privilege functions, how teachers are not simply co-opted or constrained. Instead, this article brings into view the agency of teachers who embrace privilege in spite of thorny questions around educational inequality that elite private schools cannot avoid.
Debates over medium of instruction, as ideological skirmishes, showcase discursive identity construction, reproduction, and contestation by different social groups. Drawing on such debates in letters to the editor and internet‐based newsgroup posts written by Bangladeshi English‐medium (EM) and Bangla‐medium (BM) educated writers, this article examines the construction of elite identity by the EM educated group. It illustrates how this group drew on changing discourses of elitism, language ideologies, and other identity resources to construct self‐identity that emphasized the achievement of qualifications and attributes rather than unearned social privilege, and how the territorially bound elite identity was transformed into deterritorialized cosmopolitan identity in the process. The article contributes to our understanding of the relationship between language, identity, and society by illustrating struggles for identity and status maintenance in education that is increasingly being dominated by English and English as a medium of instruction under the influence of neoliberal globalization. It also suggests how English and national languages may relate to (post)colonialism, nationalism, national identity, and social class in a globalized world.
The evolution of teachers’ identities in Australia highlights the struggles between state and civic over the control of schooling and also the contingent nature of the teacher identity itself. A genealogical analysis of this history makes visible these contingencies, but more importantly suggests that little reckoning has been afforded to teachers’ agency within these social struggles. This gap in understandings of teacher identity, as even potentially agentic, highlights the need for a more nuanced understanding of teachers and their transformative potential. In particular, it calls for a focus on teachers within elite private schools because these costly schools are highly influential as the aspirational model for schooling provision. If teachers’ agency in these neoliberalised spaces were possible, if they could be empowered in their stewardship of the educational enterprise, then their activation would be crucial in any wider reform effort.
In recent decades, youth sociology in the antipodes has paid inadequate attention to social class and the question of privilege. We critique narrow and utilitarian ways that social class has been analysed in the antipodes, arguing that the primary focus on the marginalised has overlooked the significance of privilege in perpetuating and maintaining social reproduction. While there is some evidence of a growing interest in the subjective experiences of class, we propose a new research agenda for youth sociology in the antipodes which includes a much more explicit focus on class and approaches that recognise its complex, longitudinal and intersectional nature, and its relationship with privilege. As an example of how such a research agenda could be developed, we conclude by drawing upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu to show how his theoretical tools can provide deeper insights into how privilege operates through institutional and intergenerational processes
This paper outlines the findings of a mixed-method study of private supplementary tutoring received by students at international schools offering the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) in China. Phase One was an online survey of 151 IBDP graduates across 14 schools, while Phase Two included semi-structured interviews with school administrators, teachers, and students in five IBDP schools. Almost one quarter (23.8%) of surveyed graduates from the sample of IBDP schools reported having received private supplementary tutoring. A hierarchical regression analysis indicated that participation in private supplementary tutoring was negatively associated with final IBDP scores. Interview data illuminated that private supplementary tutoring was discouraged by most teachers and administrators due to a perception of tension with the IB’s educational philosophy, a view that private supplementary tutoring is not conducive to IBDP assessments, and that providers lacked specialised knowledge of the IBDP curriculum. Nevertheless, interviewees noted that low performing IBDP students often utilised private supplementary tutoring for remedial purposes, especially for Mathematics and languages.
Although class theory is gaining resurgence in British sociology, it has been for many years marginal to much sociological theorising and its impact on other countries such as Australia and New Zealand has been limited. While youth sociology historically emerged out of concerns about working-class youth it has, since the late 1990s, become substantially marginalised, either seen as irrelevant or having less significance for understanding young people’s lives. This chapter sets out to explain why this has been the case and to challenge this perspective by proposing that the work of Pierre Bourdieu can help illuminate how class is operating in contemporary times.
This article analyses the strategies found in two elite secondary institutions in Buenos Aires designed to legitimise the selection of students aspiring to become members of the elite. The first are personalization strategies where teachers and students work together with the aim of facilitating success in examinations. The second are strategies that promote competition between students, which have the effect of the students being responsible for their success. Field work took place in two schools, where interviews were conducted with the principals, teachers of different subjects and parents. Both schools use examinations as a mechanism for justifying their students’ merits, but develop different pedagogies to achieve this. The private school which recruits the children of the economic elite implements strategies to maximise students’ results by grouping them according to individual performance and facilitating the development of supportive relationships with teachers. At the public school, individual competition is fostered, where students find themselves in large classes and pupils appear to be an ‘anonymous’ mass. In this school, where mostly the cultural and intellectual elite send their children, merit is also justified through performance, but it is emphasised that young people have attained high results as a result of their, hard work.
Aaron Koh contributed to a collection of multi-site global ethnographic articles published here (2014, Vol. 12, No. 2) that present class reproduction as operationalised in elite education. While the collection adds to the current international critique of meritocracy, a close look at Koh's contribution reveals that critical ethnography can lose its representational and persuasive power if muddled by theoretical and methodological haziness and if it fails to forefront participants' voices. This response is meant to encourage Koh to re-present his data and position so as to sure up his comment on this important issue.
While much of the critical scholarship around elite schooling has focused on the students who attend elite institutions, their social class locations, privileged habituses and cultural capital, this paper foregrounds curricular form itself as a central mechanism in the (re)production of elites. Using Basil Bernstein's conceptual framework of pedagogic codes, this paper depicts how one of the most high-status forms of school knowledge - critical thinking - is taught in both an elite as well as a mainstream secondary school in Singapore. It argues that even as, or more accurately, precisely because the Singapore Ministry of Education emphasizes the teaching of critical thinking in all schools and to all students, how such knowledge is presented and performed in the school curriculum becomes crucial in differentiating elites from mainstream students. Findings suggest that whereas the pedagogic codes in the mainstream school remain oriented towards an instrumental rationality and the fulfillment of external and profane market exigencies, in the elite school they invoke a rationality that is inward-looking, personalized and that encourages the development of narcissistic, sacred identities. This paper concludes by considering how curricular form itself functions as a non-neutral mechanism for the transmission of educational knowledge, and the ways in which, in Singapore's highly stratified society where meritocracy functions as a key principle of governance, the elite identities that accrue from such a curricular form further entrench the political legitimacy of a "meritorious" class.
This paper discusses the social and political implications of the emergence of Portuguese-English bilingual education discourse in Brazil, which has been widely disseminated since the 1990s. Initially, a discursive analysis of prestige bilingualism concepts will be presented. Second, the issue of language policies will be addressed through the analysis of the discursive disjunction ‘public school English'/‘private language school English’. This will be followed by a brief discussion of the globalizing circumstances implied in internationalization practices of private educational provision in Brazil underlying the emergence of Portuguese-English bilingual schools in the country. Finally, these three issues will be articulated in order to understand bilingual education discourse in Brazil as emerging from and interacting with existing discursivities of English language teaching/learning practices which were historically and politically established in the national educational system.
While Irish elite schools have adopted some internationalising practices, international students are often erased from their ‘public faces’. Based on interviews and analysis of schools' websites, this paper argues that Brooks and Waters' [2014. “The Hidden Internationalism of Elite English Schools.” Sociology, advance online publication April 2] argument that elite schools hide their internationalism to preserve an explicit national identity for strategic purposes largely applies to the Irish case. In addition, it explores how features characteristic of Irish elite educational settings can help understand ambiguous attitudes to the international ‘other’, who is not only hidden but also at times ‘Irish-ised’ as these schools cultivate cultural identities defined primarily along ethno-national lines.
Elite schools around the world aspire to produce perfect students and yet there are always obstacles to this perfection being achieved. In this paper, we suggest that this process of perfectionism and obstruction can best be understood using a methodology that looks to the creative arts, rather than the usual social science orthodoxies. Our focus in this paper is therefore not on methodology as a technique, but rather methodology as a resource for thought. Using Lars Von Trier’s film The Five Obstructions as a point of departure, we suggest that the quest for perfect students, or indeed perfect humans, is one that ignores the inherent obstacles that block pathways to perceived perfection. Our research draws on ethnographic fieldwork from six elite secondary schools in Argentina, Australia, Barbados, England, Hong Kong, and South Africa. We posit a creative methodology permits a coming to terms with the abstractions required when analyzing and interpreting large amounts of data from a multi-sited ethnographic study. This approach makes it feasible to draw some conclusions about a common characteristic – perfectionism – among elite schools around the globe.
Employing a Weberian understanding of the centrality of a strong bureaucracy in the modern nation-state, this article examines the relationship between the state and elite education in France. Through a historical analysis and an examination of two current issues facing education – widening participation and pressures to internationalise – we illustrate how the legitimacy of the administrative and political establishments, as well as the status granted to elite education tracks, has been largely preserved. Furthermore, dominant social classes have actively played a role in this alliance, thereby limiting the circle of eligible individuals who can aspire to future elite positions.
We would like to thank Gioconda Robinson and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay. ABSTRACT: A transnational capitalist class (TCC) has emerged as that segment of the world bourgeoisie that represents transnational capital, the owners of the leading worldwide means of production as embodied in the transnational corporations and private financial institutions. The spread of TNCs, the sharp increase in foreign direct investment, the proliferation of mergers and acquisitions across national borders, the rise of a global financial system, and the increased interlocking of positions within the global corporate structure, are some empirical indicators of the transnational integration of capitalists. The TCC manages global rather than national circuits of accumulation. This gives it an objective class existence and identity spatially and politically in the global system above any local territories and polities. The TCC became politicized from the 1970s into the 1990s and has pursued a class project of capitalist globalization institutionalized in an emergent trans-national state apparatus and in a “Third Way ” political program. The emergent global capitalist historic bloc is divided over strategic issues of class rule and how to achieve regulatory order in the global economy. Contradictions within the ruling bloc open up
Neoliberalism is commonly viewed as an economic doctrine that seeks to limit the scope of government. Some consider it a form of predatory capitalism with adverse effects on the Global South. In this groundbreaking work, Aihwa Ong offers an alternative view of neoliberalism as an extraordinarily malleable technology of governing that is taken up in different ways by different regimes, be they authoritarian, democratic, or communist. Ong shows how East and Southeast Asian states are making exceptions to their usual practices of governing in order to position themselves to compete in the global economy. As she demonstrates, a variety of neoliberal strategies of governing are re-engineering political spaces and populations. Ong’s ethnographic case studies illuminate experiments and developments such as China’s creation of special market zones within its socialist economy; pro-capitalist Islam and women’s rights in Malaysia; Singapore’s repositioning as a hub of scientific expertise; and flexible labor and knowledge regimes that span the Pacific.Ong traces how these and other neoliberal exceptions to business as usual are reconfiguring relationships between governing and the governed, power and knowledge, and sovereignty and territoriality. She argues that an interactive mode of citizenship is emerging, one that organizes people—and distributes rights and benefits to them—according to their marketable skills rather than according to their membership within nation-states. Those whose knowledge and skills are not assigned significant market value—such as migrant women working as domestic maids in many Asian cities—are denied citizenship. Nevertheless, Ong suggests that as the seam between sovereignty and citizenship is pried apart, a new space is emerging for NGOs to advocate for the human rights of those excluded by neoliberal measures of human worthiness.
The four books under review form part of a resurgent social science interest in elites as obligatory entry points in understanding changing relations of power and growing inequalities in a post-organized capitalism. All four books demonstrate, in differing but often complementary ways, that in an age of formal meritocracy, rising powers, government outsourcing, weightless information economies, financial deregulation, and increasingly dense digitized networked information and communication systems, elites have changed. Their mobile lives, their ability to feel at ease in almost any situation, and their role as intermediaries connecting different spheres of cultural, economic and political life are defining features of the new, truly global elites. The four books demonstrate the enduring influence of Bourdieu as a theorist of elites and showcase methodological and conceptual innovations to further develop comparative research.
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