The libidinal economy of the globalising elite school market

Abstract

Elite schools are banks of emotion where the individuals and social classes that they serve deposit their desires and gain social dividends. They are also registers of social recognition and serve as spaces of collective capacity for their privileged clients. Elite schools have long been sites for the exercise of a form of affective agency by the wealthy and socially powerful. Many such people and groups have heavy emotional investments in the schools that their families have attended over several generations. Habitual use of such schools, over extended time, signifies their enduring social stature. Other wealthy parents, those without such cross-generational attachments to a particular school but with ardent social aspirations, search relentlessly for an elite school that matches their desires and assures their children’s educational and social ascendency.