<p>The United States experienced a tremendous expansion of higher education after the Second World War. However, this expansion has not led to a substantial reduction to class inequalities at elite universities, where the admissions process is growing even more selective. In his classic studies of French education and society, Pierre Bourdieu explains how schools can contribute to the maintenance and reproduction of class inequalities. Bourdieu's concepts have stimulated much research in American sociology. However, quantitative applications have underappreciated important concepts and aspects of Bourdieu's theory and have generally ignored college life and achievement. With detailed survey and institutional data of students at elite, private universities, this dissertation addresses a gap in the literature with an underexplored theoretical approach. </p> <p>First, I examine the class structure of elite universities. I argue that latent clustering analysis improves on Bourdieu's statistical approach, as well as locates class fractions that conventional schemas fail to appreciate. Nearly half of students have dominant class origins, including three fractions - professionals, executives and precarious professionals - that are distinguishable by the volume and composition of cultural and economic capital. Working class students remain severely underrepresented at elite, private universities. Second, I explore two types of social capital on an elite university campus. In its practical or immediate state, social capital exists as the resources embedded in networks. I explore the effects of extensive campus networks, and find that investments in social capital facilitate college achievement and pathways to professional careers. As an example of institutionalized social capital, legacies benefit from an admissions preference for applicants with family alumni ties. Legacies show a distinct profile of high levels of economic and cultural capital, but lower than expected achievement. Legacies activate their social capital across the college years, from college admissions to the prevalent use of personal contacts for plans after graduation.</p> <p>Third, I examine how social class affects achievement and campus life across the college years, and the extent to which cultural capital mediates the link between class and academic outcomes. From first semester grades to graduation honors, professional and middle class students have higher levels of achievement in comparison to executive or subordinate class students. The enduring executive-professional gap suggests contrasting academic orientations for two dominant class fractions, while the underperformance of subordinate class students is due to differences in financial support, a human capital deficit early in college, and unequal access to "collegiate" cultural capital. Collegiate capital includes the implicit knowledge that facilitates academic success and encourages a satisfying college experience. Subordinate class students are less likely to participate in many popular aspects of elite campus life, including fraternity or sorority membership, study abroad, and drinking alcohol. Additionally, two common activities among postsecondary students - participating in social and recreational activities and changing a major field early in college - are uniquely troublesome for subordinate class students. Overall, I conclude that Bourdieu provides a unique and useful perspective for understanding educational inequalities at elite universities in the United States.</p> / Dissertation

This dissertation examines the ways in which Ferréz Sacolinha, Junot Díaz and Ernesto Quiñonez negotiate the global subordination of diasporic subjects in São Paulo and New York. Through a street aesthetic of the urban underworld, these four writers explore social inequalities tied to race and social class in the urban periphery. In São Paulo, Ferréz and Sacolinha use the public transit system to examine the contained mobility of residents of the periferia. Through encounters with criminality, Ferréz critiques the image of the criminoso associated with the marginal space of the periferia. Sacolinha analyzes systemic inequalities through the cobrador's use of the perua, which functions as a subversive tactic against governmental organizations. In New York, Junot Díaz and Ernesto Quiñonez address the marginalization of urban Latino youth on the streets of the inner city. Díaz complicates the fractured identity of Dominican American youth who experience stigma in relation to the U.S.'s black-white racial binary. By dissecting the relationship between crime and hegemonic social structures, Quiñonez traces Spanish Harlem residents' colonized, racialized status as Puerto Ricans in New York. In the literary works of the four authors, young protagonists roam the streets, maintaining a macho demeanor to conceal their insecurities and to appear to others -- and more importantly to themselves -- as tough individuals who will not crack under pressure. The aggressive, fearless attitude that they embody allows them to survive the inner city streets. They face an endless cycle of suspicion, racial discrimination and lack of resources, which limits their chances for social mobility.

The aim of this study is to explore how middle class residents construct narratives of belonging. The study was conducted in a suburban area in the southern part of Stockholm. This is a neighborhood that undergoes a renewal and status increase. I used a method consisting of auto-photography and subsequent interviews to explore resident’s narratives of belonging. The sampled group was residents with academic exams. Participants were instructed to take five photos of their everyday life in the area and reflect upon these in the interviews. The result was analyzed within a constructive grounded theory frame. The theoretical concepts used take inspiration from Bourdieu’s cultural capital, field and social class. The results are divided into three main cores. The results suggest that a core narrative of constructive affiliation was a useful tool to understand how residents construct a sense of belonging. Residents in this study affiliated with other groups and social classes in the area, through a heightened sense of reflection on their own social position. Residents subscribed to an inclusive version of elective belonging.  Second the construction of a sense of locally based authenticity was a narrative process were they deployed a sense of belonging to the “local” and the small scale community. Third, a sense of rootless territorialism was reflected on in their sense of belonging. This was a process were residents narrative mediated between a stable and a fluid place attachment.

The aim of the thesis was to explore the magnitude of inequity in accessibility to initial formal education, continuing adult education, and work-related informal learning for the workplace. The two main issues that the thesis attempted to determine is whether social background characteristics that affect initial educational attainment continue to influence participation in adult education and work-related informal learning. More specifically, this research focused on three main questions: First, to what extent does parents’ social background influence educational attainment levels for Canadians from different generations? Second, to what extent does parents’ social background influencing participation in adult education for their offspring beyond the effects of an individual’s own social background? And, third, to what extent does parents' social background have on their offspring’s participation in informal learning for the workplace beyond the effects of an individual's own social class background? A secondary data quantitative analysis was carried out on the data collected in the 2004 Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL) survey. Both crosstab analysis and structural equation analysis were used to obtain an overview of inequities in participation in formal education and informal learning and to test the applicability of Bourdieu’s social reproduction theory. Overall, the findings of this thesis indicate that social reproduction occurs not only through the formal education system, but also through the adult education system. More specifically, parents’ education continues to be a good predictor of the level of education attained by offspring. Moreover, one’s level of education continued to be a predictor of participation in adult education. Social reproduction was not present for work-related informal learning. In fact, those from low incomes were more likely to engage in informal learning than those from high incomes. These findings indicate that despite level of cultural and economic capital, the majority of Canadians engage in a learning activity. It is apparent that structures that are present in our formal education system continue to advantage students with high cultural and economic capital; however, work-related informal learning is accessible to all.

This qualitative case study investigated how an elementary school shaped the acculturation processes of grade 3-4 immigrant students. It was grounded on John Berry’s model of acculturation strategies which maintains that the existence of multiculturalism in the host society is a necessary condition for the integration of immigrants. Also, Geneva Gay’s conceptualization of culturally responsive teaching was accepted as the analytical framework which represents the actualization of multiculturalism in school settings. The site of the study was an elementary school with a large number of immigrant students in Western Canada. The study used participant observation and interviews as methods of data collection. The audio recording of the classroom sessions for five full weeks, interviews with teachers and students, as well field notes were the sources of data. The analysis of the data showed that there was little evidence of culturally responsive teaching in the classroom. Findings suggest that these grade 3-4 students were receiving an education which is usually typified as the education for working-class children, were detached from their own culture, were taught by a curriculum defined by themes and orientation from Western/mainstream culture, and were experiencing a whole series of disconnected relationships among teachers, parents, and themselves. It was concluded that, despite the powerful multicultural policies at the provincial and school board level, school practices, and teachers’ attitudes were reflecting the melting pot-model of host society in Berry’s model and the process of institutional acculturation favoured assimilation rather than integration. / Thesis (Ph.D, Education) -- Queen's University, 2010-04-01 20:35:36.735

This dissertation examines geographies of schooling in relation to how a group of new teachers in Canada conceptualize “inner city” schooling as a uniquely Canadian construct. The study uses a critical approach that explores issues of race, and their intersections with issues of gender, social class, and other identity markers. Seven new teachers graduating from a 2009-2010 teacher education program in the province of Ontario, Canada took part in this study. As a function of the inner city, the inner city school is problematized as a particular geographical space, complete with its own meanings. Results of this study indicate that new teacher conceptualizations of Canadian inner city schools are not uniform and coherent, but complex, contradictory, and dependent upon each individual teacher’s experiences with difference. Overall, participants demonstrated limited ability to speak to their own racial identities in relation to teaching in such schooling contexts. Because most participants learned to teach in predominantly White field-placement settings, they perceived race to be a non-issue and recognized it as a construct only if raced bodies were present. With respect to issues of gender, participants most often discussed what is often referred to as the feminization of teaching in elementary schools. However, there was a profound sense in which inner city schools were conceptualized as “male space” or as space from which female teachers needed protection. This was informed by a widespread conception that male teachers could more effectively manage inner city students. Classroom management emerged as an issue that concerned participants with the least experience with difference. Finally, there was a direct relationship between the theoretical approaches used by the teacher education program in discussing inner city schooling and individual teacher ability to articulate their pedagogical approaches to teaching in this milieu. / Thesis (Ph.D, Education) -- Queen's University, 2011-07-11 20:54:49.407

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Socioeconomic positions of individuals are clearly associated with the chances of living a healthy long life. In four empirical studies based on Swedish population registers, two topics are examined in this thesis: The relationships between different indicators of social position and mortality, and the importance of family members’ socioeconomic resources for the survival of the individual. The overall conclusion from the separate studies is that no single individual socioeconomic factor gives a complete picture of mortality inequalities. Further, the socioeconomic resources of partners and adult children are important in addition to the individual ones. The specific results from each study include that: I education, social class, social status and income are, to various extent, independently associated with mortality risk. Education and social status are related to women’s mortality, and education, social class, and income to men’s mortality. II one partner’s social position is related to the other partner’s survival, also when individual socioeconomic factors are statistically controlled for. In particular, men’s mortality is linked to their wives’ education and women’s mortality to their husbands’ social class. III adult children’s education is related to their parents’ risk of dying, also when both parents’ socioeconomic resources are taken into consideration. Further, the association between the offspring’s level of education and parental mortality cannot be explained by charac­teristics that parents share with their siblings. IV children’s social class and income are related to parental mortality, but not as strongly as the education of the children. There is no relationship between a mother’s own education and breast cancer mortality, while mothers seem to have better chances of surviving breast cancer if they have well-educated children. / <p>At the time of doctoral defence the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Manuscript</p>

Seeing Subjects plots a literary history of modern Britain that begins with Dorian Gray obsessively inspecting his portrait’s changes and ends in Virginia Woolf’s visit to the cinema where she found audiences to be “savages watching the pictures.” Focusing on how literature in the late-19th and 20th centuries regarded images as possessing a shaping force over how identities are understood and performed, I argue that modernists in Britain felt mediated images were altering, rather than merely representing, British identity. As Britain’s economy expanded to unprecedented imperial reach and global influence, new visual technologies also made it possible to render images culled from across the British world—from its furthest colonies to darkest London—to the small island nation, deeply and irrevocably complicating British identity. In response, Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, and others sought to better understand how identity was recognized, particularly visually. By exploring how painting, photography, colonial exhibitions, and cinema sought to manage visual representations of identity, these modernists found that recognition began by acknowledging the familiar but also went further to acknowledge what was strange and new as well. Reading recognition and misrecognition as crucial features of modernist texts, Seeing Subjects argues for a new understanding of how modernism’s formal experimentation came to be and for how it calls for responses from readers today.

Bakgrund: Låg socioekonomisk status ökar risken för osunda beteendemönster, bland annat vad gäller matvanorna. Barns levnadsvanor är av stor vikt, då grunden för deras framtida vanor läggs under barndomen.Syfte: Att beskriva skillnaderna i barns kostvanor beroende på vilken socioekonomisk grupp de tillhör.Metod: Litteraturstudie. Resultatet i tio vetenskapliga artiklar sammanfattades genom att söka återkommande ämnen, av vilka teman skapades.Resultat: Socioekonomiska faktorer, föräldrars inkomst och utbildningsnivå påverkar barns matvanor och måltidsmönster. Det framkom att låg socioekonomisk status vanligtvis innebär mer osund och mindre sund mat, samt mer oregelbundna måltidsmönster.Slutsats: Fler undersökningar av barns matvanor beroende på socioekonomisk status bör genomföras för att få bättre insikt i anledningarna till dessa. Detta för att kunna sätta in riktade interventioner i syfte att minska ojämlikheterna i kostvanor mellan barn. / Background: Socioeconomic differences influence the risk of unhealthy behavior, like the diet, among other things. Children’s habits are of extra importance, since future habits are established during childhood.Aim: To describe the differences in children’s diet due to socioeconomic background. Method: Integrative literature review. The results of ten scientific articles were summarized by searching for recurring topics, which were turned into themes.Results: Socioeconomic background, the parents’ income and the parents’ education affected the children’s diet and meal patterns. Low socioeconomic status were usually connected to more unhealthy foods, smaller amounts of healthy foods and irregular meal patterns. Conclusion: More studies of children’s diets due to socioeconomic background should be conducted to get better insight into the reasons for these differences. This should be done so that interventions aimed at closing the gaps of inequity between children in different socioeconomic groups can be implemented.