Howard Prosser – författare

A response to Argentina’s shifting political climate, Global Liberalism and Elite Schooling in Argentina reveals how elite schooling encourages the hoarding of educational advantage and reinforces social inequalities. Presenting Buenos Aires’s Caledonian School as part of the growing scholarly discussion on elite education in the Global South, Howard Prosser situates the school’s history in concert with that of the state, the region, and the globe. The book applies new methodologies for the study of elite schools in globalizing circumstances by fusing ethnographic fieldwork with archival research and a wealth of secondary sources. This transdisciplinary approach focuses on the nature of liberalism as a global ideal, positing that eliteness is sustained by an economy with its own culture of value and exchange that, ironically, the scholarship on elites may help perpetuate.

A response to Argentina’s shifting political climate, Global Liberalism and Elite Schooling in Argentina reveals how elite schooling encourages the hoarding of educational advantage and reinforces social inequalities. Presenting Buenos Aires’s Caledonian School as part of the growing scholarly discussion on elite education in the Global South, Howard Prosser situates the school’s history in concert with that of the state, the region, and the globe. The book applies new methodologies for the study of elite schools in globalizing circumstances by fusing ethnographic fieldwork with archival research and a wealth of secondary sources. This transdisciplinary approach focuses on the nature of liberalism as a global ideal, positing that eliteness is sustained by an economy with its own culture of value and exchange that, ironically, the scholarship on elites may help perpetuate.

This book charts new territory both theoretically and methodologically. Drawing on MacDougall’s notion of social aesthetics, it explores the sensory dimensions of privilege through a global ethnography of elite schools. The various contributors to the volume draw on a range of theoretical perspectives from Lefebvre, Benjamin, Bourdieu, Appadurai, Kress and van Leeuwen to both broaden and critique MacDougall’s original concept. They argue that within these elite schools there is a relationship between their ‘complex sensory and aesthetic environments’ and the construction of privilege within and beyond the school gates. Understanding the importance of the visual to ethnography, the social aesthetics of these elite schools are captured through the inclusion of a series of visual essays that complement the written accounts of the aesthetics of privilege. The collection also includes a series of vignettes that further explore the sensory dimension of these aesthetics: touch, taste—though metaphorically understood— sight and sound. These varying formats illustrate the aesthetic nature of social relations and the various ways in which class permeates the senses. The images from across the different schools and their surroundings immerse the reader in these worlds and provide poignant ethnographic data of the forces of globalisation within the context of elite schooling.

While the work is a history of the Dialectic of Enlightenment’s Anglophone reception, it also reflects the post-1968 left’s retreat to academia, which echoes the Frankfurt School’s own stance of political resignation.

While the work is a history of the Dialectic of Enlightenment’s Anglophone reception, it also reflects the post-1968 left’s retreat to academia, which echoes the Frankfurt School’s own stance of political resignation.