Page - (000114) - in Knowledge and Networks

106 simple picture in which obtaining credentials from elite educational institutions was the only way of entering fi nancial services work in the City of London. Such caution is particularly important given the marked changes in the nature of elite fi nancial labor markets and work in the City of London that have occurred since much of the literature on “ gentlemanly capitalism” was written in the 1980s and 1990s. Of par- ticular importance for my focus on investment banking labor markets in this chapter are the changes associated with fi nancial services work during the period of rapid- fi nance- led growth and innovation in the 2000s (Engelen, Konings, & Fernandez, 2010 ; Froud, Johal, Leaver, & Williams, 2006 ). Alongside the growth of new fi nan- cial products, particularly securitization requiring greater technical competency and quantitative skills, this period saw elite fi nancial labor markets in London expand beyond employment in merchant and investment banks to include new forms of fi nancial intermediation offered by actors including private equity fi rms, hedge funds, and sovereign wealth funds (Folkman, Froud, Johal, & Williams, 2007 ; Wójcik, 2011 ). The related diversifi cation and growth in elite fi nancial labor meant that the old-school-network forms of recruitment based on educational background could no longer provide the number of elites demanded by fi nancial labor markets (Leyshon & Thrift, 1997 ), suggesting changes in the relationship between education and elite fi nancial work. In particular, these developments indicate that research needs to focus not only on the relationship between educational background and fi nancial elites, but also on the ways in which education, including that undertaken after a fi rst undergraduate degree, was important in securing entry into elite fi nan- cial labor markets and inculcating individuals into the required skills, competencies, and new forms of embodied and cultural capital demanded by the changing nature of the City of London. These concerns form the basis of the rest of this chapter, in which I draw on the case of early- career investment bankers in examining the inter- section between postgraduate education and everyday socioeconomic practice in the City in order to better understand the role of education in inculcating elites into particular working environments and its geographical implications for those per- sons often assumed to be globally mobile fi nancial elites. Postgraduate Education and Legitimate Elite Financial Practice To address these concerns, I turn to a set of arguments made by Bourdieu (1980/ 1990 , 1989/ 1996 ) concerning everyday socioeconomic practice , to his work on doxa—an idea still not widely developed in relation to education (although, see also Faulconbridge & Hall, 2014 ). In so doing, my analysis draws on the wider interest in normalized practice within socioeconomic life as it relates to processes of learn- ing and the reproduction of practices in geographically specifi c ways (Amin & Cohendet, 2004 ; Wenger, 1998 ). For Bourdieu, assumptions and understandings about appropriate everyday practice in any given context, or doxa, strongly infl u- ence an individual’s actions and thoughts . This insight is important for the argu- ments in this chapter for two main reasons. First, the concept of doxa suggests that S. Hall