Religious Conservatism versus Elite Professionalism: Contradictory Socialisation at an Elite Islamic School

The literature on elite schools seeks to understand the role of elite socialisation in reproducing inequality and the role of symbolic boundary work in legitimating privilege. This article presents an ethnographic study of an elite Islamic school in Iran. We ask what do elite making, cultural capital (re)production and boundary work look like at an elite school in a semi-authoritarian, theocratic context? We introduce the concept of a contradictory organisational habitus. We find the school’s organisational habitus is a hybrid that attempts but fails to fully synthesise an elite-professional habitus of highly developed life skills (including embodied social skill) with a religious-conservative habitus of traditionalist Islamic morality and modesty. On the one hand, its elite-professional habitus of distinction and exclusion conflicts with its goal of instilling Islamic modesty. On the other hand, its Islamic-conservative orientation results in conflicts with and compromises in its teaching of life skills, particularly critical thinking.