‘A Home Away from Home’: Space, Ritual and Performance at an Elite Boys’ School in England
Abstract
This article advances ethnographic understandings of the distinctive micro-practices of the formation of elites taking place within Fortune Park School, a private boys’ school in England. It focuses primarily on two related axes of the elite school environment; the layout, use and presentation of the school’s physical space, and an analysis of school ritual. I argue that the veneer of formality presented by the school is a ‘frontstage’ performance, disguising a network of interactions or ‘backstage’ performances that are characterised by a sense of informality or ease . Therefore, I show that the rituals taking place within the school buildings reflect a constant tension between formal and informal states of being. Learning to navigate this tension becomes part of the everyday experience of a Fortune Park School student, contributing towards the acquisition of valued forms of embodied capital that have been demonstrated as advantageous for those with it in their possession.
Ingestion failed: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/srv/app/app/worker.py", line 85, in run_once process_job(db, job) File "/srv/app/app/worker.py", line 39, in process_job pdf_path, info = fetch_pdf_temp(candidate["url"]) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ File "/srv/app/app/downloader.py", line 129, in fetch_pdf_temp raise ValueError(f"PDF source returned HTTP {response.status_code}.") ValueError: PDF source returned HTTP 403.
No local PDF is available.
GROBID Extracted text; discontinued.
This text is generated from TEI extraction for accessibility, search, and TTS. Formulas, tables, figures, page layout, and references may not perfectly match the original PDF.
No accessible text representation is available. The text extraction service has been discontinued for the time being. If you require this service, for accessibility or any other reason, please submit an issue/request on this page.
Metadata
Issues
No public issues have been filed for this DOI.
Submit an issue
Record history
| When | Event | Field | Old | New |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-18 19:37:53.011249+00:00 | identifier_assigned | DSEID | DSEID-001-9590661 |