Education as Field and Market : The Case of Upper Secondary School in Stockholm, 2006–2008

• In the last three decades, Swedish education has undergone profound transformations, including a gradually increasing degree of privatization and marketization. These transformations offer an opportunity to analyse the relation between social space, education as social field and an emerging educational market. A correspondence analysis (CA) of all pupils attending all upper secondary educations in the Stockholm area in 2006–2008, with Euclidean classification as an additional analytic instrument, reveals that the social structure of the field of upper secondary education remains largely the same in spite of the market-oriented reforms. The embodied form of the unequally distributed social and cultural assets of which this structure is an expression, habitus, is particularly important for explaining both the distance and the responsiveness to marketization which characterize and separate elite schools, from medium and lower-ranked schools. It is concluded that the “market” should be understood as embedded in a social field of education that, in turn, reflects the polarities of the larger social space.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi -- Sociologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology -- Sociology (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

social space

field

market

social stratification

upper secondary education

Utbildningssociologi

Sociology of Education

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kap (ämneskategori)