Analyzing Literature Review Sources: Finding a Framework that Fits

     It was a long and arduous process, but the data is coded, and the themes have been found. My groups members and I have chosen to write about community service at the Croft School and how it is considered important but the work they do is not actually impactful or meaningfulto the communities they are working in. Now that we have this idea solidified, the next step is to find sources for our literature review that we can use to analyze and theorize the data we have coded. I began looking through a number of databases to find sources on how community service serves the function of reproducing elites and allowing them to maintain their eliteness. I wanted to find sources that showed, more specifically, how this practice of doing service positivelyimpacted those that are doing it more than those that they are trying to help. I wanted to see what theories other authors had used and how they connected these ideas of community service and social reproduction.

       In my search, Bourdieu was a very relevant source. Many scholars have written on this topic, and as I plan to, many have used Bourdieu’s ideas to theorize their findings. His work on how elites doing service work allows them to maintain their eliteness is very relevant to our project. The students at the Croft School do service work so that the school can emphasize how deserving their school and students are of praise. They have so much, but they give back as well so it is all justified. Bourdieu’s concept of invisibility is very important as well because it shows that the only reason why this process is allowed to continue is because it is so secretive. If people were aware that elites were doing this work to maintain their position in society, they would be appalled. So, the elites do their service work and gain more and more cultural capital while the communities that they work on suffer at the hand of their reproductive practices (Bourdieu, 1996). This source has an obvious link to our project, as Bourdieu even explicitly speaks of the reproductive power of elites doing service work.

     However, Bourdieu was the obvious choice. Even Yoda agrees that Bourdieu is always relevant when talking and writing about the reproduction of different forms of capital! To deepen my understanding and analysis, I wanted to find another source as well. I browsed countless databases, looking for articles on how service work reproduced eliteness and the negative effects of service work, but was finding it so much easier to find sources on the benefits of service work. So many of the articles were examples of how service work can be good for those that do it and the schools that require it.

     At first, I was feeling at a loss. How could these types of articles help me in my analysis of the Croft School? I was looking for articles on how service work reproduces elites, and these articles were all showing service work to be a great thing that schools offered their students. However, I finally came across an article and I could instantly see how I could use it to further my analysis. This article was titled, “Doing Well by Doing Good: A Study of the Effects of a Service-Learning Experience on Students Success” and it is about how having service-learning experiences in a school’s curriculum results in students performing better academically in other subjects (Berson et. al., 1998). I could use this article to articulate one specific way in which service work wasbenefitingthe students who do it over others. Because service work was allowing them to perform better academically, it was providing them with yet another advantage over those that they were working on. This work was allowing elites to not only distance themselves from those in underprivileged communities, but it was also allowing them to get ahead of the members of those communities academically, giving them even more resources in their lives. This article would factor nicely into our paper, showing just how much the students of the Croft School were benefiting from the service work they were doing, with no notion that they were doing much good for the communities that they were going into.

     Finding articles and papers that are relevant to what you wish to write about can be a challenging task. There are so many works out there, but it can often feel like there is not one that says exactly what you want it to say. What I have learned through our exploration of theories with Adam is that the theory does not always fit perfectly. Oftentimes, the work of applying theories and using the works of others to further your analysis is about finding connections between your work and that of the other person so that you can use what they found to make sense of what you have found. Additionally, sometimes, it can be useful to employ multiple theories. In my case, I will use Berson et. al.’s article to show how the Croft School is using the practice of service-based learning to further the knowledge and prestige of its students. By making its students more elite, it makes the school itself more elite as well. In Bourdieu’s eyes, through the practice of service-based learning, Croft students can gain even more academic capital which they can turn into other forms of capital and in turn, increase their elite status. The practice of service-based learning is a means for them to reach their eventual goal of being as elite as possible. Therefore, by combining the ideas of Berson et. al. and Bourdieu, I can most effectively analyze the practices at work at the Croft School.

     While it is not always easy to apply theory to further analysis, it is the theories that allow the reader, and the author themselves, to make sense of what is happening in the analysis. By finding theories that apply to our paper, I have found it easier to make sense of what I want to say in the paper and how I will show that what our paper is about matters. It is not a work that stands on its own, but rather part of a long and complicated dialogue between works. It is another voice among others, trying to make sense of this cycle of reproduction of elites, moving closer to an answer of what this process truly entails.

 

 

References:

Berson, Judith S. and Younkin, William F. (1998). “Doing Well by Doing Good: A Study of the Effects of a Service-Learning Experience on Student Success.” Higher Education. Paper 184. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/slcehighered/184/. 

 

Bourdieu, Pierre. (1996). The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power. (Clough, L.C., Trans). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1989)