Introduction: understanding the re-articulations of privilege over time and space

This special issue is based entirely on the research project called 'Elite independent schools in globalising circumstances: a multi-sited global ethnography' and this opening essay introduces both the project and the essays to follow. It offers a justification for studying elite schools, elites and elitism and explains some of the project's guiding premises not the least being its deliberate departure from those studies of elite schools that are nation bound. It clarifies the project's emphasis on the complexities of elite formation and expression as they are caught up in changing modalities of globalisation over time and place.