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Journal Article•DOI•

Shamus Rahman Khan, Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School

Janice Aurini1•
University of Waterloo1
08 Jun 2011-Canadian Journal of Sociology (University of Alberta Libraries)-Vol. 36, Iss: 2, pp 236-238
About: This article is published in Canadian Journal of Sociology.The article was published on 2011-06-08 and is currently open access. It has received 183 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Elite & Privilege (social inequality).

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Citations
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Journal Article•DOI•
Why Status Matters for Inequality

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Cecilia L. Ridgeway
01 Feb 2014-American Sociological Review
TL;DR: The authors argue that status is a central mechanism behind durable patterns of inequality based on social differences, and that status beliefs bias evaluations of competence and suitability for authority, bias associational preferences, and evoke resistance to status challenges from low-status group members.
Abstract: To understand the mechanisms behind social inequality, this address argues that we need to more thoroughly incorporate the effects of status—inequality based on differences in esteem and respect—alongside those based on resources and power. As a micro motive for behavior, status is as significant as money and power. At a macro level, status stabilizes resource and power inequality by transforming it into cultural status beliefs about group differences regarding who is “better” (esteemed and competent). But cultural status beliefs about which groups are “better” constitute group differences as independent dimensions of inequality that generate material advantages due to group membership itself. Acting through microlevel social relations in workplaces, schools, and elsewhere, status beliefs bias evaluations of competence and suitability for authority, bias associational preferences, and evoke resistance to status challenges from low-status group members. These effects accumulate to direct members of higher status groups toward positions of resources and power while holding back lower status group members. Through these processes, status writes group differences such as gender, race, and class-based life style into organizational structures of resources and power, creating durable inequality. Status is thus a central mechanism behind durable patterns of inequality based on social differences.

509 citations

Cites background from "Shamus Rahman Khan, Privilege: The ..."

  • ...The implicit project at the country club, the elite school, or the men’s sports club can be to collectively construct and enact participants’ difference and superiority in comparison to the excluded group (Khan 2011)....

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Journal Article•DOI•
Cultural Knowledge and Social Inequality

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Annette Lareau
29 Jan 2015-American Sociological Review
TL;DR: The authors found that middle-class young adults had more knowledge than their working-class or poor counterparts of the "rules of the game" regarding how institutions worked and displayed more of a sense of entitlement to ask for help.
Abstract: Using both qualitative longitudinal data collected 20 years after the original Unequal Childhoods study and interview data from a study of upwardly mobile adults, this address demonstrates how cultural knowledge matters when white and African American young adults of differing class backgrounds navigate key institutions. I find that middle-class young adults had more knowledge than their working-class or poor counterparts of the “rules of the game” regarding how institutions worked. They also displayed more of a sense of entitlement to ask for help. When faced with a problem related to an institution, middle-class young adults frequently succeeded in getting their needs accommodated by the institution; working-class and poor young adults were less knowledgeable about and more frustrated by bureaucracies. This address also shows the crucial role of “cultural guides” who help upwardly mobile adults navigate institutions. While many studies of class reproduction have looked at key turning points, this address argues that “small moments” may be critical in setting the direction of life paths.

297 citations

Journal Article•DOI•
Improving Cultural Analysis: Considering Personal Culture in its Declarative and Nondeclarative Modes

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Omar Lizardo1•
University of Notre Dame1
01 Feb 2017-American Sociological Review
TL;DR: The authors argue that persons acquire and use culture in two analytically and empirically distinct forms, which they label declarative and nondeclarative, depending on the dynamics of exposure and encoding and modulating the process of cultural accessibility, activation, and use.
Abstract: While influential across a wide variety of subfields, cultural analysis in sociology continues to be hampered by coarse-grained conceptualizations of the different modes in which culture becomes personal, as well as the process via which persons acquire and use different forms of culture. In this article, I argue that persons acquire and use culture in two analytically and empirically distinct forms, which I label declarative and nondeclarative. The mode of cultural acquisition depends on the dynamics of exposure and encoding, and modulates the process of cultural accessibility, activation, and use. Cultural knowledge about one domain may be redundantly represented in both declarative and nondeclarative forms, each linked via analytically separable pathways to corresponding public cultural forms and ultimately to substantive outcomes. I outline how the new theoretical vocabulary, theoretical model, and analytic distinctions that I propose can be used to resolve contradictions and improve our understanding...

253 citations

Cites background or result from "Shamus Rahman Khan, Privilege: The ..."

  • ...…homogenization around the institutional language of multiculturalism, tolerance, respect for diversity, and non-comparability across forms of participation, elites continue to engage aesthetic objects in ways that seem both class-coded and linked to class-specific experiences (Khan 2011)....

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  • ...The basic empirical mystery has now acquired the status of a canonical finding in the educational stratification literature: in spite of having comparable aspirations and subjective assessments of their academic competence, substantial gaps exist in achievement and the likelihood of making educational transitions for black and Hispanic youths in comparison to white youths in the United States....

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  • ...One is tied to chronically accessible declarations of ethnoracial pride typical of black and other racialized ethnic minorities in the United States; the other is tied to equally long-standing and universal (across ethnoracial groups) commitments to American ideals of success and achievement....

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  • ...The most salient manifestation of this phenomenon, and the one Khan (2011) sees as constitutive of modern forms of privilege, is that instanced in the declarative endorsement of highly institutionalized public codes promoting openness, cosmopolitanism, and meritocracy, along with pervasive…...

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  • ...Semantic knowledge is usually impersonal and thus mainly stated as propositions about the world, at varying degrees of abstraction, without explicit reference to individual experience (e.g., “in the United States, doing well in school leads to better jobs”)....

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Journal Article•DOI•
What Are Dual Process Models? Implications for Cultural Analysis in Sociology

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Omar Lizardo1, Robert Mowry1, Brandon Sepulvado1, Dustin S. Stoltz1, Marshall A. Taylor1, Justin Van Ness1, Michael Lee Wood1 •
University of Notre Dame1
30 Dec 2016-Sociological Theory
TL;DR: The dual process framework (DPF) as mentioned in this paper is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of learning, memory, thinking, and action in cognitive and social psychology, which can be applied to a variety of analytically distinct issues of interest to sociologists beyond specific issues related to morality.
Abstract: In this paper we introduce the idea of the dual process framework (DPF), an interdisciplinary approach to the study of learning, memory, thinking, and action. Departing from the successful reception of Vaisey (2009), we suggest that intradisciplinary debates in sociology regarding the merits of “dual process” formulations can benefit from a better understanding of the theoretical foundations of these models in cognitive and social psychology. We argue that the key is to distinguish the general DPF from more specific applications to particular domains, which we refer to as dual process models (DPMs). We show how different DPMs can be applied to a variety of analytically distinct issues of interest to cultural sociologists beyond specific issues related to morality, such as culture in learning, culture in memory, culture in thinking, and culture in acting processes. We close by outlining the implications of our argument for relevant work in cultural sociology.

124 citations

Posted Content•
The Unfulfillable Promise of Meritocracy: Three Lessons and Their Implications for Justice in Education

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Jonathan J. B. Mijs1•
Harvard University1
01 Dec 2014-Social Science Research Network
TL;DR: In this article, the authors draw on a literature in sociology, psychology and economics that has extensively documented the unfulfilled promise of meritocracy in education and argue that the pervasiveness of meritocratic policies in education threatens to crowd out need and equality as principles of justice.
Abstract: This paper draws on a literature in sociology, psychology and economics that has extensively documented the unfulfilled promise of meritocracy in education. I argue that the lesson learned from this literature is threefold: 1) educational institutions in practice significantly distort the ideal meritocratic process; 2) opportunities for merit are themselves determined by non-meritocratic factors; 3) any definition of merit must favor some groups in society while putting others at a disadvantage. Taken together these conclusions give reason to understand meritocracy not just as an unfulfilled promise, but as an unfulfillable promise. Having problematized meritocracy as an ideal worth striving for, I argue that the pervasiveness of meritocratic policies in education threatens to crowd out need and equality as principles of justice. As such it may pose a barrier rather than a route to equality of opportunity. Furthermore, meritocratic discourse legitimates societal inequalities as justly deserved such as when misfortune is understood as personal failure. The paper concludes by setting a research agenda that asks how citizens come to hold meritocratic beliefs; addresses the persistence of (unintended) meritocratic imperfections in schools; analyzes the construction of a legitimizing discourse in educational policy; and investigates how education selects and labels winners and losers.

117 citations

Cites background from "Shamus Rahman Khan, Privilege: The ..."

  • ...…book’s closing paragraph, ‘The production of privilege will continue to reproduce inequality while implying that ours is a just world; the weapons of the weak are removed, and the blame for inequality is placed on the shoulders of those whom our democratic promise has failed’ (Khan, 2010, p. 192)....

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  • ...These privileged students are made into elites by the interactions that consecrate them, by the consistent, generous feedings they receive of their own capacity and promise’ (Khan, 2010, p. 162)....

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Related Papers (3)
Note de lecture sur Ruben Gaztambide-Fernández, The best of the best. Becoming elite at an American boarding school et Shamus Khan, Privilege. The making of an adolescent elite at St. Paul's schoo

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01 Jan 2012-Revue Francaise De Sociologie
Muriel Darmon
Book Review: Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School:

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01 Nov 2011-The Sociological Review
June Edmunds
Paradoxes of Privilege

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01 May 2012-Contemporary Sociology
Victoria E. Bonnell