Who Is Anybody to Judge?” Educational Resistance through Recognition
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8130745 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Christina Ciocca Eller (0000-0002-9202-2236, Harvard University Press, corresponding author), Elena Ayala-Hurtado (0000-0002-7162-9178, Princeton University) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 99 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 174-194 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-21 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Sociology of Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-0407 • E-ISSN: 1939-8573 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00380407261419106 |
| OpenAlex | W7130839994 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 44 |
The United States is a “schooled society”: one where formal education is viewed as a primary conduit between American cultural ideals and people's moral worth and social value. Sociologists of education have described resistance against this dominant model through disinvestment from school, particularly among some students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds. Yet it remains unclear if “school-invested” students also enact resistance and if so, what such resistance entails and means for educational and social inequality. Bringing together the literatures on recognition and educational resistance, we argue that recognition of stigmatized educational groups by school-invested students may serve as an important form of educational resistance. We build this argument by drawing on unique multiwave interview data (n = 168) to investigate college students’ perceptions of college dropouts. We find that although a minority of respondents discursively deploy stigmatizing frames when describing dropouts, more draw on recognition frames to bridge moral and symbolic gaps between college students and particular dropouts. We also find that certain college experiences, particularly exposure to peers with complicated college trajectories, appear to change students’ narratives on dropout over time. We consider the implications of recognition-based resistance and the associated opportunities and limitations concerning inequality
Argument (complex analysis · Disinvestment · Educational research · Hidden curriculum · Higher education · Meritocracy · Narrative · Resistance (ecology · Sociology of Education · Critical Race Theory in Education · Higher Education Research Studies · Social and Cultural Dynamics
Paying for the Party
The Schooled Society
Women without Class
Integration InterruptedTracking, Black Students, and Acting White after Brown
Living the Drama
Dropouts from higher education
Money, Morals, and Manners
Intermediate Educational Transitions, Alignment, and Inequality in U.S. Higher Education
Coming Up Short
Public Goods, Private Goods
Learning about inequality in unequal America
The Impact of Education on Intergroup Attitudes
Legitimating status
Black students' school success
Women, the Home and Resistance in Northern Ireland
What Meritocracy Means to its Winners
Conceptualizing Resistance
Reconsidering Culture and Poverty
Addressing Recognition Gaps
Methodological Pluralism and the Possibilities and Limits of Interviewing
What is missing? Cultural processes and causal pathways to inequality
Reclaiming' the Female Body
Techniques to Identify Themes
How many cases do I need
The Expectational Liminality of Insecure College Graduates
Instrumental and Expressive Education
Fake It 'til You Make It
Straddling Boundaries
The Cultural Politics of Everyday Discourse
Framing Processes and Social Movements
World Society, Institutional Theories, and the Actor
Social and Economic Returns to College Education in the United States
In the Shadow of the Schooled Society
What Makes a Quality College? Reexamining the Equalizing Potential of Higher Education in the United States
Domains of Diffusion
Culture, Cohorts, and Social Organization Theory
The Effects of Education as an Institution
Colour-blindness and diversity
The Unfulfillable Promise of Meritocracy
| Highly cited | No |
|---|