Table Of ContentELITE SCHOOLS
Geography matters to elite schools—to how they function and flourish, to how
they locate themselves and their Others. Like their privileged clientele they use
geography as a resource to elevate themselves. They mark, and market, place.
This collection, as a whole, reads elite schools through a spatial lens. It offers fresh
lines of inquiry to the ‘new sociology of elite schools’. Collectively the authors
examine elite schools and systems in different parts of the world. They highlight
the ways that these schools, and their clients, operate within diverse local,
national, regional, and global contexts in order to shape their own and their
clients’ privilege and prestige. The collection also points to the uses of the
transnational as a resource via the International Baccalaureate, study tours, and
the discourses of global citizenship. Building on research about social class,
meritocracy, privilege, and power in education, it offers inventive critical lenses
and insights particularly from the ‘Global South’. As such it is an intervention in
global power/knowledge geographies.
Aaron Koh is Associate Professor of Literacy and English Education at Griffith
University, Australia.
Jane Kenway is Professorial Fellow with the Australian Research Council,
Professor of Education at Monash University, and an elected Fellow of the
Academy of Social Sciences, Australia.
Education in Global Context
Series Editor: Lois Weis
Social Class and Education
Global Perspectives
Edited by Lois Weis and Nadine Dolby
Confucius and Crisis in American Universities
By Amy Stambach
Globalizing Educational Accountabilities
By Bob Lingard, Wayne Martino, Goli Rezai-Rashti, and Sam Sellar
Elite Schools
Multiple Geographies of Privilege
Edited by Aaron Koh and Jane Kenway
ELITE SCHOOLS
Multiple Geographies of Privilege
Edited by Aaron Koh and Jane Kenway
First published 2016
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors
for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or
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photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Koh, Aaron, 1967- editor. | Kenway, Jane, editor.
Title: Elite schools : multiple geographies of privilege / edited by Aaron Koh and Jane Kenway.
Description: New York : Routledge, [2016] | Series: Education in global context | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015034961| ISBN 9781138779402 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138779419 (pbk.)
| ISBN 9781315771335 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Elite (Social sciences)--Education. | Upper class--Education. | Boarding schools.
| Education--Social aspects--Cross-cultural studies.
Classification: LCC LC4931 .E55 2016 | DDC 373.22/2--dc23LC record available at http://lccn.
loc.gov/2015034961
ISBN: 978-1-138-77940-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-77941-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-77133-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby
CONTENTS
Series Editor’s Overview ix
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction: Reading the Dynamics of Educational Privilege
Through a Spatial Lens 1
Aaron Koh and Jane Kenway
1 Becoming the Man: Redefining Asian Masculinity in an
Elite Boarding School 18
Wee Loon Yeo
2 Capitalising on Well-Roundedness: Chinese Students’
Cultural Mediations in an Elite Australian School 33
Yujia Wang
3 The Emergence of Elite International Baccalaureate
Diploma Programme Schools in China: A
‘Skyboxification’ Perspective 50
Moosung Lee, Ewan Wright, and Allan Walker
vi Contents
4 Elite Schoolboys Becoming Global Citizens: Examining
the Practice of Habitus 70
Chin Ee Loh
5 The Joy of Privilege: Elite Private School Online
Promotions and the Promise of Happiness 87
Christopher Drew, Kristina Gottschall, Natasha Wardman,
and Sue Saltmarsh
6 Old Boy Networks: The Relationship Between Elite
Schooling, Social Capital, and Positions of Power in
British Society 101
Shane Watters
7 Exclusive Consumers: The Discourse of Privilege in Elite
Indian School Websites 122
Radha Iyer
8 The Insiders: Changing Forms of Reproduction
in Education 139
Hugues Draelants
9 Can Geographies of Privilege and Oppression Combine?:
Elite Education in Northern Portugal 157
Eunice Macedo and Helena C. Araújo
10 “We Are Not Elite Schools”: Studying the Symbolic
Capital of Swiss Boarding Schools 171
Caroline Bertron
11 Tourism, Educational Travel, and Transnational Capital:
From the Grand Tour to the ‘Year Abroad’ among
Sciences Po-Paris Students 188
Bertrand Réau
Contents vii
12 Schools and Families: School Choice and Formation of
Elites in Present-Day Argentina 202
Sandra Ziegler
13 The Economy of Eliteness: Consuming Educational
Advantage 217
Howard Prosser
Contributors 231
Index 235
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SERIES EDITOR’S OVERVIEW
The series on Education in Global Context takes seriously the transnational
migration of commerce, capital, knowledge, and peoples, and the implications of
such for education and social structure. Globalization—in education, as in the
world economy and patterns of human migration—affects all of us. The
increasingly globalized and knowledge-based economy renders the linkages
between education and social and economic outcomes empirically ‘up for grabs’
in a wide range of nations. Books in this series underscore the consequences of
this ‘new global’ while stressing the importance and effects of a paradigmatic shift
in our understanding of schooling and social/economic arrangements.
The changing nature of transnational migration patterns holds significant
implications for this broad intellectual project. In a context where migrants—
here defined as immigrants across class, race/ethnic, and religious background;
refugees who comprise a range of national origins; and international students who
similarly hail from a wide range of ‘sending nations’—are positioned and work to
reposition themselves inside new global circumstances, we can expect notable
change in the nature of and engagement with knowledge, educational practices,
and outcomes across the globe. This works to alter social structural arrangements
both within and between nations.
Lois Weis
