In seeking to define elites, there are two prevailing conceptions. The first, influenced by a Weberian concept of class, defines elites based on their relative power and resources. The second, more Marxist in nature, characterizes elites as individuals who dominate social relationships. In both conceptions, elites exercise power and possess resources. While both approaches provide important analytical tools for understanding hegemonic elites, they offer limited insight into non-hegemonic or minoritized elites. Focusing on Palestinian citizens of Israel, my presentation explores the notion of a minoritized elite: actors who possess power and resources in certain domains while remaining structurally dispossessed in others. It asks how such groups negotiate an elite identity within a broader social field that constrains and devalues their forms of capital, producing a mismatch between their elite identity and the field, as theorized by Bourdieu.
The presentation draws on preliminary insights from a larger research project based on in-depth interviews with 64 Palestinian citizens of Israel. It examines how cultural capital is produced, negotiated, and mobilized in shaping identities and social interactions both within the community (locally and transnationally) and in relation to the broader Israeli society. Through this analysis, I shed light on the dynamics between dominant and non-dominant cultural capital, as well as on the processes of symbolic recognition through which non-dominant forms seek legitimacy while simultaneously contesting and redefining what counts as legitimate capital.
Dalia Halabi is a lecturer in the Department of Education at Oranim Academic College, and currently a EUME Fellow 2025/26 at the Forum Transregionale Studien. She holds a PhD in Leadership and Policy in Education from the University of Haifa. Her doctoral research examined the formation of elite identities among Palestinian students and alumni of private schools. Adopting a “study up” approach, her work interrogates social stratification, educational inequalities and class reproduction, with particular attention to elite formation among minoritized elites. She examines how marginalized communities navigate, negotiate, and reproduce elite status within unequal social structures. She previously served as the director of Dirasat – The Arab Center for Rights and Policy and has over two decades of experience in civil society and activism, with a focus on educational justice and social equity.
Hania Sobhy is a Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Political and Social Science (MPIPS). She works on education, citizenship and collective action. Her current project is a study of educational transformation in Egypt, Lebanon and Tunisia, with a focus on teachers, inequality, migration and the global learning crisis. She teaches on the comparative politics of education at the University of Göttingen. She is the author of the award-winning book Schooling the Nation: Education and Everyday Politics in Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Her other work has appeared in World Development, Mediterranean Politics, and Citizenship Studies, among others. Hania completed her studies in political science and economics at McGill and SOAS in Canada and the UK. She has previously held research positions at IREMAM in Aix-en-Provence (Marie Currie COFUND), Freie Universität Berlin and the Orient-Institut Beirut (Max Weber Stiftung). She has worked in international development since 2004 and contributes regularly to the Egyptian Daily al-Shorouk. In the academic year 2012/13, Hania has been a EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien.
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