Making merit in elite private schools
When elite private schools differentiate themselves on the basis of providing students with ‘exposure’ and communication skills rather than rote learning, does this make it more difficult for lower-middle-class students to be recognised as meritorious?
Funded by a Rhodes Scholarship and a McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of Melbourne
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Mugging up versus exposure
Published in Ethnography & Education (2014), this article describes the emergence in Hyderabad of ‘international’ schools that are only accessible to upper-middle-class and elite families and provide forms of cultural capital increasingly important for middle-class employment – ‘communication skills’, ‘open-mindedness’ and ‘exposure’.
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Cosmopolitan learning
Published in Anthropology & Education Quarterly (2016), this article questions whether it is possible to legitimate and institutionalize cosmopolitanism as merit within education systems without furthering class reproduction.
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Aspiration as capacity and compulsion
Published in Anthropological Perspectives on Student Futures (2017), this book chapter explores the aspirations and educational strategies of middle-class youth in Hyderabad. I demonstrate how lower middle-class youth are compelled to pursue a more secure middle-class future through credentialing strategies.