The elite school as ‘cognitive machine’ and ‘social paradise’: Developing transnational capitals for the national ‘field of power’

Abstract

In this article we draw on Bourdieu’s The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power and his associated conceptual apparatus to examine Singapore as a ‘field of power’ and the formation of Singapore’s ‘state nobility’ through an elite secondary school. We ask how well Bourdieu’s conceptual apparatus travels, given Singapore’s geo-political history and its strategic positioning with regard to what it calls its ‘global hinterland’. We work with Bourdieu’s notions of ‘social alchemy’, ‘cognitive machine’ and ‘social paradise’ to illuminate how an elite school in Singapore carefully and successfully grooms the future state nobility for Singapore’s field of power, in part through the development of students’ transnational capitals. We show, however, that Bourdieu’s conceptual resources are not fully portable and point to their merits and limitations in explaining the workings of power in Singapore and in relation to one of its most elite schools.