Elite schools, class disavowal and the mystification of virtues

Kenway, Jane; Lazarus, Michael

doi:10.1080/10350330.2017.1301791

Cited by 29 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…In Philadelphia Gentlemen (1958), Baltzell asserts that social clubs ascribe members with status while also furnishing sociability and business connections. Though membership can and does yield networking and political benefits (Bond 2012;Domhoff 1974Domhoff , 1975, the line between business and pleasure remains blurry (Kendall 2008;Sherwood 2010), and in some cases, contentious Chauvin 2014, 2017). According to Sherwood (2010), private club members emphasize sociability to deflect claims of utilitarian motives.…”

Section: Inclusion and Exclusion In Social Group Formation: The Case Of Social Clubsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to Sherwood (2010), private club members emphasize sociability to deflect claims of utilitarian motives. Business dealings occur, but must be handled discreetly to avoid formal and informal sanctions (Sherwood 2010; see also Kendall 2008;Philips 1994). Social and economic utilities, then, remain relevant in contemporary American club life.…”

Section: Inclusion and Exclusion In Social Group Formation: The Case Of Social Clubsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rather than merely providing (male) travelers with places to eat and lodge, modern private clubs offer members recreational opportunities (Sherwood 2010). Private club members are also increasingly leveraging their economic resources for communal initiatives (Kendall 2008;Kendall 2002). Despite their power and privileges, elite social groups also encounter structural constraints limiting their actions (Cousin, Khan, and Mears 2018) and compelling them to discursively distance themselves from elitism (Kenway and Lazarus 2017;Sherman 2017;Thurlow and Jaworski 2017).…”

Section: Inclusion and Exclusion In Social Group Formation: The Case Of Social Clubsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Walking the Intra-Racial Tightrope: Balancing Exclusion and Inclusion within a Black Social Club

Guzman

2021

The Sociological Quarterly

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Exclusion and inclusion constitute the formation of social groups and their boundaries. Historically, middle-and upper-class African Americans formed social organizations to engage in racial uplift and status enhancement. Recent work suggests the purposes of such organizations have shifted from status enhancement toward preserving intra-racial ties. Drawing on nearly four years of participant observation and 29 in-depth interviews with members of a middle-class Black men's social club, this article analyzes the tensions imbued in maintaining solidarity amid class-based divisions. Beyond providing social respite from the white gaze, this Black space offers escape from the Black gaze, or the burdens of racial uplift. Studying Black social clubs and symbolic boundary formation is richly informative for understanding boundary maintenance and group solidarity within racialized organizations.

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Section: Inclusion and Exclusion In Social Group Formation: The Case Of Social Clubsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Inclusion and Exclusion In Social Group Formation: The Case Of Social Clubsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Inclusion and Exclusion In Social Group Formation: The Case Of Social Clubsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Walking the Intra-Racial Tightrope: Balancing Exclusion and Inclusion within a Black Social Club

Guzman

2021

The Sociological Quarterly

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“…If one can succeed at something one has not been trained in, or possesses no specialized knowledge of, they have achieved status through their own intellect and diligence. They have been ‘true’ to themselves, and have therefore earned their privilege (Kenway and Lazarus ), thus embodying the neoliberal ideal of success: independent creativity equals professional, social, and financial gain. Contemporary theories of social class find (e.g.…”

Section: The Discourse Of Elite Authenticitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, status is established by the appearance of varied, but refined, consumer choices. In this sense, omnivorous consumption is essential to the curating of an elite identity that is simultaneously not elitist: a cultural omnivore hides behind the mask of anti‐snobbery, which in turn contributes to a disavowal of privilege (Kenway and Lazarus ), and an implicit denial of inequality. Whereas overt classism can be easily recognized, and criticized, omnivorous elitism is significantly more powerful in its ability to normalize.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

(De)constructing distinction: Class inequality and elite authenticity in mediatized food discourse

Mapes

2018

Journal of Sociolinguistics

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Orienting to recent work on language materiality (Cavanaugh and Shankar ) and elite discourse (Thurlow and Jaworski 2017a), I examine the discursive production of class status and the management of distinction/privilege in mediatized food discourse. Specifically, this paper presents a critical discourse analysis of a New York Times food section corpus comprised of 259 articles (e.g. restaurant reviews, celebrity chef profiles, features concerning cooking techniques or trending ingredients, etc.) in which I identify an over‐arching discourse of elite authenticity. I show how elite authenticity is a key strategy by which distinction is nowadays both (re)produced and (dis)avowed in food discourse, and that it is accomplished via five rhetorical strategies: historicity, simplicity, pioneer spirit, lowbrow appreciation, and locality/sustainability. Thus, food discourse, rooted in familiar bourgeois anxieties and privileges, sustains the post‐class ideologies (Thurlow ) and omnivorous consumption (Khan ) at the heart of contemporary class formations.

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Problematising teachers' accounts of privilege in elite high schools

Pinto‐Dror,

Shoshana

2024

British Educational Res J

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The research question at the core of this paper concerns how teachers in elite Israeli high schools explain their educational work in this context, given its central role in establishing and perpetuating privilege in the current polarised era. To answer this question, we conducted 28 interviews with teachers from three elite high schools in Israel. The findings reveal three ways teachers justified their educational work in elite schools: cultivating the ‘serving elite’, helping shape elite students' leftist political orientation and future voting behaviour (emphasising the idea that political leftism serves as a mitigating force against the excesses of plutocracy) and fulfilling elite children's right to a level of education commensurate with their ability. The discussion problematises these justifications by highlighting their features, which, in turn, contribute to a complex understanding of how privilege functions and how advantages and inequality are produced and perpetuated in exclusive and exclusionary elite spaces.

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Elite schools, class disavowal and the mystification of virtues

Cited by 29 publications

References 2 publications

Walking the Intra-Racial Tightrope: Balancing Exclusion and Inclusion within a Black Social Club

Walking the Intra-Racial Tightrope: Balancing Exclusion and Inclusion within a Black Social Club

(De)constructing distinction: Class inequality and elite authenticity in mediatized food discourse

Problematising teachers' accounts of privilege in elite high schools

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