The material basis of elite schooling: capital and the state

Editorial: Elite schools and the paradoxes of distance and proximity to capital and the state This special issue problematises the relationship between the state, capital and elite schooling.Whilst it is well-established that elite schools are sites of capital accumulation and conversion for families and students, how institutions manage and negotiate their relationship to economic capital and wider forces of economic accumulation are less well explored.We know little about the material basis (Ball, 2015: 237) and set of interrelations which allow elite educational institutions to accumulate wealth and power.This special issue therefore draws together papers that examine how schools relate to capital and how the state mediates and enables the relationship of elite schools to forms of institutional wealth.Despite frequently holding charitable and/or not-for-profit status, elite schools maintain close proximity to economic capital through fees, endowments, philanthropy, alumni funding campaigns and trading activities such as leasing out facilities and satellite campus operations.They tend also to be physically proximate to wealth -located in historically wealthier areas (Cookson Jr and Persell, 1985;Courtois, 2018;Gaztambide-Fernández, 2009) or in privileged, white enclaves within economically and ethnically mixed territories (Bolay and Rey, 2021).