Class Strategies and the Education Market: The Middle Classes and Social Advantage / Edition 1

by Stephen J. Ball

Overview

Class Strategies and the Education Market examines the ways in which the middle classes maintain and improve their social advantages in and through education.
Drawing on an extensive series of interviews with parents and children, this book identifies key moments of decision making in the construction of the educational trajectories of middle class children. Stephen J. Ball organises his analysis around the key concepts of social closure, social capital, values and principles and risk, while bringing a broad range of up-to-date sociological theory to bear upon his subject. From this thorough analysis, valuable and thought-provoking insights emerge into the assiduous care and considerable effort and expenditure which goes into ensuring the educational success of the middle class child
The middle classes are a sociological enigma, presenting the social researcher with considerable analytic and theoretical difficulties. Class Strategies and the Education Market provides a set of working tools for class analysis and the examination of class practices. Above all, it offers new ways of thinking about class theory and the relationships between classes in late modern society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415272773
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/19/2002
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Stephen J. Ball

Table of Contents

1. Class and Strategy 2. Market Research! The Inclination and Capacity for Choice 3. Cultural Capacity and Social Capital 4. Fear and Anxiety 5. Starting Early! 6. We are all Libertarians now? 7. 'Tawney's Curse': Class Divisions in Education

Editorial Reviews

'Ball is to be complemented on the excellent structure of the book ... An extremely valuable and much needed piece of empirical research.' - Sociology

From the Publisher