Session Information
04 SES 02A, Social Capital and Inclusion
Paper Session
Time:
2008-09-10
11:15-12:45
Room:
AK2 136
Chair:
Inger Assarson
Contribution
This paper will draw on the data collected in three case study independent schools in Scotland: The Belfry School (all boys, small to medium size, non-denominational, mainly boarding, primary and secondary, high fees), Augusta Girls’ School (medium sized, all girls, all-age, high fees, non-denominational), and Charteris College (large school, co-educational, all-age, high fees, non-denominational). The analysis will be framed by a multiple capitals approach drawing together and developing the work of Bourdieu and Putnam. The paper will attempt to draw out the major emergent themes and ‘findings’ across the three case study schools in relation to the framing research questions. In particular, emphasis will be given to the bonding social capital built inside the schools as a way of ‘protecting’ young people from certain social class backgrounds in social reproduction terms. Where social capital might be understood as a factor in promoting resilience amongst young people at risk of social exclusion, in these privileged settings it appeared to work to enhance an already supportive environment rather than defend against a possibly hostile one. This social capital, which is also built with the parent community, is potentially convertible into other forms of capital in a variety of ways. For instance, there is a very specific experience of spatio-temporality in the schools located within the multiple and variant spatio-temporalities of the nation (Sassen, 2001), manifested in a lot of on-task time for academic and extra-curricular work and a reaching beyond the local and national to the global. This is linked to an interesting amalgam of Scottish national capital (McCrone, 2005) and what we would see as cosmopolitan capital, which structures aspirations towards mobility and global labour markets. We can relate this to Bauman’s observation that mobility is an element today of social advantage. The role of emotional capital and its articulation with gender in respect of all three schools will also be explored: in the single-sex schools, concerted but distinct attempts to instantiate a culture of care might be understood at Belfry to be part of a project of remaking hegemonic masculinities, where at Augusta the project was one of capitalising on traditionally feminine capacities. In a rearticulated meaning of the concept beyond that suggested by Reay (2004), we would call this an economising of emotional capital. Here emotional capital appeared to be part of contemporary cultural capital and necessary for success in new and emergent labour markets constituted globally. In conclusion the paper will reflect upon what the study tells us about the efficacy of the concept of social capital and how it might need to be augmented and developed to take account of class and gender relations in order to comment upon wider processes of inclusion and exclusion through schooling: it will also examine how productive the notion of intersecting capitals is in developing understandings of the concept of social capital itself.
Method
Case study;
interviews; observations; focus groups; questionnaires; documentary analysis
Expected Outcomes
This analysis is at an early stage. We suggest that a multiple capitals approach is important in understanding processes of inclusion and exclusion in schools in their global context, and in developing the concept of social capital. Our findings also indicate the importance of problematising advantaged, privileged communities when studying inclusion and exclusion.
References
McCrone, D. (2005) ‘Cultural capital in an understated nation: the case of Scotland’, The British Journal of Sociology, 56 (1), pp.65-82. Reay, D. (2004) ‘Gendering Bourdieu’s concept of capitals? Emotional capital, women and social class’, in Adkins, L. and Skeggs, B. (Eds) Feminism after Bourdieu, Oxford, Blackwell, pp.57-74. Sassen, S. (2001) ‘Spatialities and temporalities of the global: Elements for a theorization’ in Appadurai, A. (Ed) Globalization, Durham, Duke University Press, pp.260-278.
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