The State Nobility Elite Schools in the Field of Power [Paperback]

In this major new work, Pierre Bourdieu examines the distinctive forms of powerpolitical, intellectual, bureaucratic, and economicby means of which contemporary societies are governed. What kinds of competence are claimed by the bureaucrats and technocrats who govern us? And how do those who govern gain our recognition and acquiescence?Bourdieu examines in detail the work of consecration that is carried out by elite education systemsin France by thegrande ?coles, in the United States by the Ivy League schools, and in England by Oxford and Cambridge. Today, this state nobility has at its disposal an unprecedented range of powers and distinctive titles to justify its privilege. Bourdieu shows how it is the heirstructural and sometimes genealogicalof thenoblesse de robe, which, in order to consolidate its position in relation to other forms of power, had to construct the modern state and the republican myths, meritocracy, and civil service that went along with it.Combining ethnographic description, historical documentation, statistical analysis, and theoretical argument, Bourdieu develops a wide-ranging and highly original account of the forms of power and governance that have come to prevail in our society today.Examining in detail the work of consecration carried out by elite education systems, Bourdieu analyzes the distinctive forms of powerpolitical, intellectual, bureaucratic, and economicby means of which contemporary societies are governed. Since the 1960s, Pierre Bourdieu's terrific constancy has been there to hold us to the vision and division of criticism, detachment, reason, truth. . . .The State Nobilityis an enormous addition to his vast architecture. Pierre Bourdieu is Professor of Sociology at the Coll?ge de France. Stanford University Press has published nine other books by Bourdieu, most recently The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field(1996).