Reach for the stars: a constellational approach to ethnographies of elite schools.

This paper offers a method for examining elite schools in a global setting by appropriating Theodor Adorno's constellational approach. I contend that arranging ideas and themes in a non-deterministic fashion can illuminate the social reality of elite schools. Drawing on my own fieldwork at an elite school in Argentina, I suggest that local and global determinants in the school's past contribute to its current, and relatively recent, elite status. Moreover, all of these factors can be arranged to elucidate the school in a history of global capitalism that coincides with Argentine nationalism, British ‘informal’ imperialism and Presbyterian educationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]