Knowledge, skills and dispositions: the socialisation and 'training' of elites
Abstract
Editorial and presentation of the different papers selected for this special issue. The aim is to explore how elite groups and elite identities are formed and how educational and training processes shape the creation of elites. But also why these might vary in space and in time, across different contexts. Five specific aspects are considerate:
- erase the gap between sociologists and political scientists studying elites,
- situate the study elite formation in the context of massification of higher education,
- how globalisation affects the processes by which elite secure and legitimise elite positions
- pay more attention to the central role played by more diffuse and softer forms of knowledge and dispositions (informal training process facilitating the affective processes of a sense of belonging to a particular professional group and elite fraction).