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Citizenship (and) Inequality: Ethnographic Research on Education and the Making and Remaking of Class Power and Privilege

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The Palgrave Handbook of Citizenship and Education

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Abstract

This chapter is based on a meta-ethnographic investigation. Its main theme is that the processes of selection that operate in schools and education systems in Western countries, taking Sweden as an example, are claimed to be just and meritocratic but are instead fundamentally unjust and ineffective systems that reproduce rather than challenge existing structural inequalities. Socio-economic restrictions and the reproduction of upper-class cultural capital and ideology as official school knowledge play key roles, but it is also concluded that education and social equality, justice, and fair citizenship possibilities for all in capitalist societies have never stretched further than wringing out minor concessions from class society whilst leaving the reproduction and absolution of the class system and inequalities based on class and distinctions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and physical and mental differences intact.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Dennis Beach

  2. University of Borås, Borås, Sweden

    Dennis Beach

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  1. Dennis Beach
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Correspondence to Dennis Beach .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, UK

    Andrew Peterson

  2. School of Education, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, SA, Australia

    Garth Stahl

  3. School of Education, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, SA, Australia

    Hannah Soong

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Beach, D. (2020). Citizenship (and) Inequality: Ethnographic Research on Education and the Making and Remaking of Class Power and Privilege. In: Peterson, A., Stahl, G., Soong, H. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Citizenship and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67905-1_74-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67905-1_74-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-67905-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-67905-1

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