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Academics influence not only knowledge production but also selection to the labour market and policy development. They have power. Despite the sociological attention paid to class in higher education, few studies have examined the way in which class interferes with the careers of those navigating from being students to becoming scholars. Building on Bourdieu's theory of social reproduction, this study examines how class influences different groups' experiences of becoming academics. Based on 60 interviews with Norwegian scholars in their early to mid-careers, the analysis identifies the kind of classed resources that are in play in the unequal access to academic positions. Beyond more classical resources, such as financial, cultural, and psychological certainty, the interviewees point to the significance of an early familiarity with the rules of the game and strategic navigation of the academic system. We use these findings to discuss and nuance Pierre Bourdieu's perspectives on the role of incorporated, practical consciousness and disinterestedness in class reproduction in the academic world. This theoretical contribution facilitates the combined analysis of the implicit and the explicit ways that dominant classes preserve their position in the hierarchy, which the study demonstrates as key to social reproduction in academic careers., (© 2024 The Author(s). The British Journal of Sociology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of London School of Economics and Political Science.)

What produces the power of senior civil servants at ministries of finance, positioned at the top of the bureaucratic hierarchy? Max Weber has claimed that a hierarchical organization, meritocratic recruitment and procedural work provide bureaucracies with legitimacy. In particular he insisted on the role of Fachwissen (disciplinary knowledge) obtained through formal education. However, he also argued for the role of Dienstwissen, forms of knowledge and skills stemming from the experience of service in itself. Weber did not elaborate on this concept in detail, and few analysts of governmental expertise have examined this notion. We draw on the practice-turn in sociology, combining the study of governmental expertise with micro-sociological studies of administrative practices. By analysing interviews with 48 senior civil servants at the British, French and Norwegian ministries of finance about their daily practices, this article demonstrates that bureaucratic note-writing and the procedural evaluation of such notes constitute a key form of expertise that yields authority. The study provides an analytical framework for understanding what administrative expertise consists of, how it is integral to procedural work, the forms bureaucratic hierarchies take in practice and how these three dimensions provide authority., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2018.)