Globally Elite

May 9, 2023

Sebastián Madrid: Popping a Bubble

Throughout this research process of the Croft school, it had not posed any major challenges until the task of finding outside sources to support our findings was presented to us. Being responsible for writing the literature review, I had to find some extra sources on top of what my peers already found, and it proved to be quite challenging. My group’s main focal point of our research is to talk about the bubbles that exist within Croft, but also about Croft being a larger bubble of their own. This was a similar theme when trying to find outside sources to help strengthen our findings. Looking for information about elite schools in Chile seemed to be nonexistent, as if no one had popped the bubble of researching Chilean elite schools.

When trying to find outside sources, I first wanted to look for articles that spoke specifically about elite schools in Chile. This seemed to be wishful thinking, as no useful resources surfaced through these searches. I tried several other times, adding and removing key words like “private” and “South America” to see if I could have any resources turned up about elite schools in other South American countries. This still resulted in results that did not fulfill what I was looking for. During class I remember hearing that Sebastián Madrid would be a potential strong researcher to look at. Upon looking up Madrid, there were several different articles that Madrid had written that showed up, with only one of them being applicable to researching elites in Chile.

The first piece of work by Madrid that I found to be very useful was, The formation of ruling class men: Private schooling, class and gender relations in contemporary Chile. Published in 2013 as the thesis submitted for his Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. While a lengthy paper, this work provided a strong foundation of how private schooling in Chile puts men in positions of power and how gender relations have seen a shift since neo-liberalism took over.

After interviewing students who have gone through elite private schooling in Chile, Madrid studies the ruling class and how it produces hegemonic masculinity within society. This is important work, especially in how this work directly relates to Chileans educated in elite spaces now holding powerful positions in their home country. Results from this study show that there exists ruling hegemony in Chilean society and it is produced and emphasized through elite private schools (Madrid, 2013). There is an important distinction within this work that is laid out where men who come from an elite private schooling are above men who do not have this background, regardless of the work they are doing following their education. Lastly, Madrid talks about women in these elite school settings, who still struggle with issues of discrimination due to cultural ideals that have existed for generations, where “the mother is the mother” (Madrid, 2013, p. 262), telling us that women still struggle to find themselves in positions of power, though these opportunities have grown, following their elite private schooling in comparison to their male counterparts.

This work by Madrid offers another insight into how elite schools help to put their students in positions of power following the completion of their education. Madrid’s work has helped to strengthen my group’s findings about the Croft school, but his work also contributes to a very small world of literature about elite private schooling in Chile.