Suchergebnisse

An ongoing debate in the literature is around the existence and constitution of a so-called 'global elite'. This article enters that debate – seeking to understand what connected but also divided a group of wealthy young people occupying a transnational space. It examines consumptive practices at one of the most expensive secondary schools in the world, educating a cross-section of the globally wealthy in Switzerland. The article offers insights into the boredom that pervaded this group, shaping some of the consumptive practices that bound its members. It also argues that other consumptive practices reflected consciously articulated differences within this group, such as national- and linguistic-based social groupings. The case study offers a unique opportunity to examine consumption as a lens onto cohesion and distinction within a particular group of transnationally located, wealthy young people, thus contributing to scholarship around the nature of the 'global elite' at large.

The authors explore global citizenship education at a boarding school in Jordan that aims to prepare democratically minded leaders for the Middle East.

As part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the journal Sociology, four e-special issues have been produced to explore specific themes across the journal's history. In this e-special, we examine how social class has been discussed during the early years of the journal, 1967–1979. Based on our selection of 10 past articles, and two more recent articles, we examine two broad themes. First, we consider how social class has been conceptualised, paying particular attention to the notion of embourgeoisement. Second, we turn to methodological considerations and discuss how approaches to researching class have evolved over time. This e-special provides not only an opportunity to celebrate the Sociology back catalogue but also to re-appraise some of the classic contributions from the first decade of the journal's history.

À partir des données d'une étude longitudinale portant sur quatre écoles privées d'une zone géographique d'Angleterre, cet article cherche à com­- prendre comment distinctement ces écoles cherchent à se placer comme 'élitistes'. La recherche met en évidence l'héritage continu des Grandes Écoles (pensionnats) des xviiie et xixe siècles dans la formation de pratiques contemporaines et modernes. Un accent mis sur l'excellence universitaire et le développement de la personne dans son entier peut être mis en évidence pour chacune des écoles étudiées. Cependant, le marché de plus en plus concurrentiel de l'enseignement veut que ces différentes écoles doivent re-interpréter activement les marqueurs élitaires pour s'engager plus directement avec les fractions des groupes sociaux qu'ils voient comme comprenant le noyau principal de leur recrutement de base.

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.

This article contributes to theorizations of agency through a focus on how understandings of power within young women's sexual and intimate relationships connect with their descriptions of feeling, reacting and sensuous bodies, to suggest why and how agentic practice takes place. Drawing on the narratives of 54 young women aged 16–18 years in one secondary school in England, findings concur with other literature which suggests that sensations experienced on or within the body can instigate (agentic) practice. Significantly, however, both physical and verbal practices are drawn on during agentic moments. Young women who discursively position themselves as 'powerful' integrate their bodies within such an understanding, using this integration to shore up the possibilities for agentic practice. Moving away from an understanding of practice as 'accommodating' and/or 'resisting' norms and inequalities, this article identifies four strategies described by the young women (assertive, refusing, proactive and interrogative) for facilitating more sustained agency.

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.