Boundaries and Experiences of Social Distance and Market Relations in French Elite Schools

• In Event: Challenging Inequality: The Complex Enactment of Social Inclusion in Education

Abstract

Word count: 495

Objectives

This paper focuses on students from economic dominant families’ valuation and boundary-making practices (Lamont, 1992, 2012; Lamont and Molnar, 2002) towards teachers as well as managerial and service staff in French elite private schools and on the latter’s responses. We show that schools constitute a key institution for these young people’s enactment and reinforcement both of a sense of entitlement (Lareau, 2011) and of a customer-supplier relationship towards adults they consider “less worthy” than them.

Theoretical Framework

We combine a Bourdieusian approach to social space with concepts from cultural sociology. Our vision of social space focuses on differences between classes and class fractions concerning both dispositions and capitals (Bourdieu, 1986, 1998). We consider that socialization into specific social positions entails the continuous actualization of dispositions and recognition of capitals in micro-interactions and encounters where status hierarchies and boundaries are made salient (Lamont, 2012; Ridgeway, 2014), enabling dominant actors to impose their views and interests on others.

Data and Methods

Our analysis is based on two ethnographies of French private elite schools: a Catholic primary school and a secondary boarding school, both schooling a majority of children and youngsters from economic dominant families. We rely on interviews with parents (N=27), students (N=29) and members of staff (N=52), on questionnaires distributed among students (N=260) and on a large set of observations in the two educational settings. The data has been systematically analyzed using a grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss, 1967).

Findings

We find that economically privileged students incorporate and assert their status in elite schools through repeated interactions not only with other students from their same social group but also with adults - frequently from lower-class backgrounds - with whom they tend to establish a client-supplier relationship (Khan, 2012). Enacting discourses and practices learned at home while simultaneously taking cues from classmates and adults, these students assert their social position by mentioning their material possessions, SES background and tuition fees or by switching to formal language in current interactions (Bernstein, 1971). Some teachers challenge their sense of entitlement by showing their “indifference to (social) differences” (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977) and focusing exclusively on academic merit. Other types of staff occasionally dismiss their views and requests as childish or “mercantile”. Overall, however, students succeed in establishing their superiority as members of staff have internalized social hierarchies and see many advantages in working in elite environments.

Significance

When focusing primarily on their intake, elite schools can be considered “bubbles of privilege” (Maxwell and Aggleton, 2010). However, as institutions enjoying a relative autonomy from socioeconomic processes and devoted to cultural reproduction (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977) they are also contexts in which economically privileged children and youngsters meet adults with dispositions and aims different from their own (Lahire, 2003). Rather than imposing their views and values the latter nevertheless generally deploy strategies to negotiate social distance and avoid conflicts in interactions that turn out to the advantage of the former. These encounters, therefore, participate in elite private schools’ objective and subjective reproduction of social hierarchies and inequalities.

Authors

• Agnes van Zanten, SciencesPo/CNRS
  Non-Presenting Author

• Emilie Grisez, Sciences Po
  Presenting Author

• Maximilien Serreau, CRIS (Sciences Po)
  Presenting Author