What does social inequality have to do with formal education? Well, a lot. Far too often, research has shown how educational systems work as tools to reproduce social inequality. In this article, the authors draw attention to how this plays out in the context of elite universities in Chile. In particular, they focus on privilege and whiteness in the context of beauty standards, using an intersectional lens to unpack how racism connects to social class and gender. Check out the abstract below, and then click through to the main article to learn more:
Reproducing privilege through whiteness and beauty: an intersectional analysis of elite Chilean university students’ practices.
Peer-reviewed research by: Paulina Rodríguez and Louise Archer
This paper undertakes an intersectional analysis of the ways in which socio-economically elite higher education students in Chile reproduce privilege through everyday practices of whiteness and beauty. Drawing on qualitative data from interviews and observations with 20 privileged students at an elite Chilean university, the paper identifies and discusses the students’ ambiguous racial identifications and the racialized, classed and gendered ways in which privilege was enacted through practices of ‘beauty’ as a ‘natural’ embodied distinction. We discuss how ideals and practices of beauty were a ‘double edged sword’ for elite female students, conferring advantage while also denying academic authenticity. We argue that Chilean elite performances of whiteness offer an added layer of complexity to existing literature, problematising and decentring performances of whiteness from white bodies. We conclude by suggesting that an intersectional lens offers a useful way to understand and address the re/production of inequalities in Chilean elite universities.
Click here to read the full open-access article, published in 2022 in the British Journal of Sociology of Education.
Full Reference //
Rodríguez P. & Archer, L. (2022). Reproducing privilege through whiteness and beauty: an intersectional analysis of elite Chilean university students’ practices, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 43:5, 804-822.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
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