Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs

"This is a book by Lauren Rivera, one of my former advisees. It has been recognized as quite important. She analyzed the culture of the elite employers, focusing on law firms, investment banks and management consultancies. She sat in on job interviews and the deliberative process of elite firms assessing applicants. Her argument is that class shapes the selection process. She shows that employers value what they called ‘the comfort factor,’ which is often described as ‘the airport test.’ They ask, ‘If you are on a trip with this applicant and got stuck at an airport, would you and the applicant have anything to talk about?’ This test influences the criteria that are used in the hiring process. Employers hire job seekers who participate in similar activities, maybe skiing in Aspen or snorkeling in Thailand. These activities are very class-dependent; they require a lot of resources. Pedigree reveals yet another context in which people who are not upper middle-class are penalized. Familiarity with high culture is what we call ‘cultural capital.’ The theory of Bourdieu is that cultural capital sustains networks that then influence who gets access to what. If, as a middle-class kid, your family dragged you to the museum on Sunday, you’re able to talk about the difference between the Impressionists and Abstract Expressionists. This is a form of cultural capital that enables the middle-class kid to access networks that are in turn less accessible to working-class kids. It confers a sense of cultural ease that is very useful and valued in a wide range of situations. This ease is central to expressing and demonstrating upper middle-class identity. In his original work, Bourdieu focused on class reproduction and high culture. In my empirical work, particularly in my book Money, Morals and Manners , I showed that Americans have a broader and more tolerant understanding of culture, but still engage in symbolic exclusion. For instance, upper middle-class Americans value all kinds of musical genres. But, as the famous paper “ Anything But Heavy Metal ” by Bethany Bryson showed, musical dislikes also define class. We tend to dislike most the musical genres associated with the groups most distant from us socially. For the white upper-middle class, that’s heavy metal (a favorite of the working-class.) My hope as a researcher is that people will become attuned to the role class plays in perpetuating inequality and that they will embrace more plural criteria for evaluation. If we base evaluation on narrow criteria of cultural sophistication we reproduce privilege. “If we base evaluation on narrow criteria of cultural sophistication we reproduce privilege.” If we come to understand the human value and dignity of people from different backgrounds, we can do a bit to deflect inequality in our everyday interactions, while at the same time addressing criticisms of populism. When the white working-class reject the elite, they register keen awareness that they are at the bottom of the cultural pecking order. By becoming more conscious of how their behavior feeds class resentment, the upper middle-class may be able one day to do less to fan the flames of populism."