World Yearbook of Education 2015

Elites, Privilege and Excellence: The National and Global Redefinition of Educational Advantage

Agnès van Zanten, Stephen J. Ball, Brigitte Darchy-Koechlin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138786424
• eBook ISBN: 9781317663034
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This latest volume in the World Yearbook of Education Series focuses on educational elites and inequality, focusing particularly on the ways in which established and emergent groups located at the top of the social hierarchy and power structure reproduce, establish or redefine their position.

The volume is organized around three main issues:

• analyzing the way in which parents, students and graduates in positions of social advantage use their assets and capitals in relation to educational strategies, and how these are different for old and new and cultural and economic elites;
• studying how elite institutions have adapted their strategies to take into account changes in the social structure, in policy and in their institutional environment and exploring the impact of these strategies on educational systems at the national and global levels;
• mapping the new global dynamics in elite education and how new forms of 'international education' and 'transnational cultural capital' as well as new global educational elite pathways shape elite students' identities, status and trajectories.

Making use of a social and an institutional approach as well as a focus on practices and policies, the volume draws on research conducted on secondary schools and on higher education. In addition, the global contributions within the book allow for a comparison and contrast of situations in different countries. This results in a comprehensive picture of common processes and national differences concerning advantage and excellence and a thorough examination of the impact of globalization on the strategies, identities and trajectories of elite groups and individuals alongside more general cultural and economic processes.

Part I

Class and Family Educational Strategies

Education systems are shaped by and in turn, shape the formation and practices of elite groups at local, national and global levels. Education itself is a significant resource that is drawn on to secure elite status – a system through which individuals, families and groups attempt to not only distinguish themselves but also to actively close off opportunities for others to pursue particular trajectories into the world of work and access to certain, influential social networks. This part of the volume begins by examining some critical theoretical, methodological and empirical questions which the study of elite education needs to engage with. This is then followed by an analysis of elite education processes in two, quite different, national contexts.

Claire Maxwell’s chapter raises some fundamental questions about the concept of ‘elites’ and the ways various disciplines (politics, sociology, education, economics) have developed our understandings of these group of people and organizations. Calling for the study of elites to be positioned within the study of power, she suggests ways in which the nature of elites might be empirically studied to better understand the effect of elite practices on social relations. The ways in which families and education institutions work together to produce the next generation of elites is reviewed. The chapter concludes by discussing whether or not elites could be considered a distinct social class grouping.

Agnès van Zanten’s chapter is focused on the strategies of upper-class families in France, and their engagement with elite preparatory classes. The author explores how families shape their children’s school trajectories by drawing on a range of economic, cultural and social resources, while working hard to preserve the social illusion of the French system being built on the principle of meritocracy, which rewards intelligence and hard work. She also highlights the important consequences of elite parents’ practices in terms of social closure and educational inequalities, as well as on how elites come to think of themselves as a ‘class meritocracy’ and the political implications of this belief.

In contrast to the French national education system, which claims to operate along universalist principles, Victoria Gessaghi and Alicia Méndez’s chapter on Argentina helps to emphasize the broader point that the specific national configuration shapes the meanings attached to schooling by different fractions of the upper classes. The chapter shows in particular how members of traditional families tend to choose private schools that support the legitimacy of this group through ‘nepotist’ admission procedures, while other groups willing to work hard can attain a different kind of elite status by access to selective and intellectually demanding state-funded schools.

1 Elites

Some Questions for a New Research Agenda

Claire Maxwell

Introduction

This chapter offers an introduction to the field of elite studies, identifying questions that this academic field still needs to grapple with. While interest in the elites has experienced a resurgence, much theoretical and empirical work is still needed. One of the first questions must be how we define elites, which in turn will inform attempts to gain a greater understanding of what shapes the formation and maintenance of these groups across local, national and global spaces. The second key area requiring further research and theorisation is whether and how the concept of elites can be integrated into our more developed understandings about social class structures and practices. Drawing on key writings in the field of elite studies, the chapter sets out in more detail the kinds of questions already engaged with by colleagues and the focus future enquiries should take. The chapter concludes with some questions scholars working on elite education should consider further.

The Study of Elites: A Brief History

A concerted focus on ‘elites’ emerged within social and political theory in the early twentieth century. Theorists were interested in where power was located and who held power within societies, focusing on ‘the governing elite’ (Pareto [1901] 1968) or ‘ruling class’ (Mosca 1939) of national political systems. Pareto offered an understanding of power as held by individuals and institutions. Power was made possible through the structural positions occupied by individuals and institutions, but crucially for Pareto, the governing elite were also powerful because they were seen by those outside the elite as possessing the qualities and talents that constituted ‘the elite of that practice’ (Hearn 2012, p. 59). Pareto and Mosca’s work can therefore be understood as an attempt to understand why a minority of people would govern a majority, but especially in Pareto’s case, also as a treatise for explaining the necessity and value of an elite – as they represent those with the most talent in a society.

Work on elites was mainly concentrated in the USA after the Second World War, and began to focus on elites as ‘the mark of a social problem’ (Khan 2012, p. 364). Mills’ (1956) work on ‘power elites’ argued that a small group of (white) men at the apex of the political, military and economic bureaucracies held significant power within US society. Thus, while Mills expanded our understandings of the power bases that structure society and what constitute the governing elite, he also found that the individuals within the power elites of post-war America came from a similar social class – the upper class(es). Mills’ work appears therefore to both challenge the conception of a ruling class by suggesting that power bases for ruling society exist in three domains – industry/corporations, politics and the military – while at the same time supporting the idea of a ‘ruling class’ by demonstrating the shared social and educational histories of this group, which facilitated close working together. Subsequent work by Hunter (1953), Dahl (1961) and Domhoff (1967) continued to examine how America was governed.

While much work on elites was conducted in the USA during the mid- to late twentieth century, more recent work on elites has extended its focus and geographical reach. Thus, today research is being published that looks at elites within the economic spheres (Hartmann 2010, Maclean et al. 2010, Bühlmann et al. 2013, Ellersgaard et al. 2013, Tholen et al. 2013) and examines which groups shape political and economic decision-making (Dogan 2003b, Scott 2003, Denord et al. 2011, Bond 2012), including a focus on transnational elites (Rothkopf 2009, Buono 2012, Murray 2012). Within the field of education there is also a growing interest in the education of elites and the composition of elite education systems at a national and global level (Karabel 2005, Gaztambide-Fernández 2009, Brezis 2011, Khan 2011, Koh and Kenway 2012, McCarthy and Kenway 2014, van Zanten 2015).

Defining and Researching Elites

The study of elites should be about the study of power and how power operates within (nationally bounded) societies, but increasingly understandings also need to focus on the flows of power at a global level (Savage and Williams 2008). Both Pareto (1968) and Mills (1956) saw power as a zero-sum game (or ‘fixed in quantity’ – Scott 2008, p. 29), where elites had ‘power over’ others. This fits with Scott’s (2003) definition of elites – ‘social groups defined by hierarchies of authoritarian power’ (p. 155) able to exert command and who have ‘corrective influence’ (Scott 2008, p. 30). Elites of this kind will use punishments and rewards to affect the actions of others – such as using force (a physical sanction) or manipulation (which can be a positive or negative sanction that will limit or facilitate access to certain resources).

However, Pareto and Mills also appear to conceptualise power as a form of hegemony (Gramsci 1971) shaping both social practices and discourse (see Lukes 2005 and Foucault 1988) – the ‘power to’ (Scott 2008 also defines this as ‘persuasive influence’, p. 30 – using argument and appeals to reason to influence the action of others). Theory suggests, therefore, that elites maintain their position because others have assessed them as excelling in performing a particular set of social practices that are seen as necessary and desirable (Pareto 1968) or because their strong similarity in backgrounds, characteristics and networks has the effect of making the exercise of power by these elite groups appear to be co-ordinated and natural (Mills 1956).

Thus, as Kahn (2012) emphasizes, to ‘study elites, then, is to study the control over, value of, and distribution of resources’ (p. 362). The kinds of resources that are valued and the ways these can be drawn on to exert power are socially and historically determined, arguably shaped by elites themselves if we draw on a ‘power to’ framework, which then shapes what, who and how ‘power over’ is practised.

Most research today acknowledges that globalisation and financialisation have had a significant effect on the more traditional bases of power found within political and bureaucratic structures – thereby reshaping the flows of power within, between and across nations (Savage and Williams 2008, Ball 2010). This makes the study of elites more challenging. If elites are ‘those who have vastly disproportionate control over or access to a resource … [or those] occupying a position that provides them with access and control or as possessing resources that advantage them’ (Khan 2012, p. 362), then how can these individuals and groups be empirically identified? Is ‘elite’ a relational term – where certain groups are compared to average members of society (Bottomore 1993, Harvey 2011)? Many researchers define the ‘elite’ groups they are studying in terms of the positions they occupy – senior management and board-level positions (Griffiths et al. 2008, Harvey 2011, Ellersgaard et al. 2013). Such an approach within sociology, political science and business studies conflates eliteness with a particular position held. This seems too one-dimensional as an approach, and one that is not grounded within a strong theoretical framework, underscoring the centrality of the concept of power in the study of elites.

Recently, authors such as Maclean et al. (2010), Denord et al. (2011) and Flemmen (2012) drawing on a Bourdieusian-inspired approach, managed to maintain a close focus on power by drawing on the concept of ‘field of power’ (Denord et al. 2011, p. 86), understood as a social space where ‘dominant agents’ (Maclean et al. 2010, p. 328) within each field compete and struggle over resources. Using the notion of ‘capitals’, these authors collate data from large datasets to construct variables/indicators and perform Multiple Correspondence Analysis (Le Roux and Rouanet 2010). Such analyses identify particular individuals as dominant agents within a field as well as those who traverse or span several fields (arguably the truly elite) through identifying the particular resources and connections with others these elite individuals have (Carroll and Carson 2003, Savage and Williams 2008, Ball 2012).

There are, however, some ways in which these theorisations would benefit from further extension. This more recent research does engage with Savage and Williams’ (2008) call to reconsider elites within ‘present day capitalism’ (p. 3), and acknowledges that power networks and configuration of elites (Dogan 2003a) have diversified, moving beyond the level of the nation state. However, more studies are needed to understand whether and how ‘new’ groups are taking the place of more established elite groups within local, national or international fields of power, and whether new fields of power are emerging within which new processes of elite formation are being developed.

Furthermore, within current research, the measures of ‘power’ are still relatively circumscribed – as they are required to be measurable indicators contained in large datasets or reducible to quantitative collation. Does such an approach miss some of the more subtle ways in which ‘power over’ and ‘power to’ can be understood and practised? I would suggest it does. These newer studies employ a theoretically coherent approach inspired by Bourdieu’s work and also offer empirically operationalisable definitions of elites through the concept of capitals. However, they potentially fail to capture the range of practices (social, emotional, economic, educational, cultural) engaged in by individual members of elite groups or practices that constitute part of what makes a collection of people an elite group. A closer focus on ‘practices’ and discursive and affective contexts that shape and drive these practices (Maxwell and Aggleton 2014a) may be critical to better understanding how elites practice power over and power to. This will be examined in greater depth further below.

A Limited Circle of Eligibles or the Circulation of Elites?

Pareto (1968) was interested in examining how equilibrium was established (formed, maintained and re-formed) within societies. He identified two types of elite groups – the governing elite and the non-governing elite. These two elite groups displayed different orientations, with the speculators being more progressive, while the rentiers were conservative in approach. Pareto argued that these elite groups alternated in who governed society at a particular point in time. Thus, Pareto suggested that while a small minority ruled, elites groups did change overtime – the ‘circulation of elites’ (Pareto 1968). Speculators, in particular, recruited talented individuals from non-elite groups to rejuvenate their ranks – suggesting that merited social mobility would benefit society, as well as being critical for social stability. However, Pareto did recognise that some elite groups resisted the circulation of elites (usually the rentiers), which he believed explained why ‘history is a graveyard of aristocracies’ (1963, p. 1430). Furthermore, he acknowledged that sometimes individuals and groups were considered elite by virtue of being labelled so, without necessarily demonstrating that they were the most qualified to be governing (i.e. that they were ‘the best of the best’ – Gaztambide-Fernández 2009).

Work in the USA in the second half of the twentieth century continued to explore the extent to which the elite groups were stable or circulating. Hunter (1953) and Domhoff (1967), for instance, have found, as Mills (1956) did, that a particular class of persons continue to hold political power within local and national systems in America. Dahl (1961), meanwhile, through his research in New Haven, found that the city moved from an elite system of governance to one where a range of groups controlled different resources and areas of power. Although Dahl recognised that it was still a relatively small group who ‘governed’, this group was continuously changing.

Dogan (2003a) usefully distinguishes between a horizontal circulation of elites which he terms ‘elite interlock’ or ‘interpenetration’ and Pareto’s more vertical understanding of elite circulation which describes recruitment and movement into the elites. The...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• Series Editors’ Introduction
• Introduction
• PART I Class and Family Educational Strategies
• PART II Elite Institutions in National and Local Contexts
• PART III The Impact of Globalization on Institutional and Student Identities
• PART IV Elite Institutions, Elite Positions and Elite Jobs
• Conclusion
• Index