Endowed, Entrepreneurial, and Empowered-Strivers: Doing a lot with a lot, doing a lot with a little

Abstract

Based on original data from one-on-one and focus group interviews with high school students in California, this article reveals how consistent access to or deprivation from informational resources influences information synthesis for scholastic work. In order to hold motivation constant, the article delineates three kinds of Striver students: Endowed, Entrepreneurial, and Empowered. The article examines the ways in which Strivers obtain information relevant to schoolwork from digital media, non-digital media, and knowledgeable individuals. Findings reveal linkages between access to informational resources and the internalization of a self-reliant or other-reliant stance towards information synthesis. Endowed-Strivers who enjoy synergistic access to informational resources adopt a self-reliant information habitus. By contrast, Entrepreneurial-Strivers with few home resources engage in linear strategies that facilitate an other-reliant information habitus. The third group, the Empowered-Strivers, benefits from school-based interventions that give them multiple information channels. Such IT interventions can act as substitutes for the rich informational resources enjoyed by Endowed-Strivers at home. Access to IT resources and teacher modeling at school make it possible for Empowered-Strivers to develop a self-reliant information habitus with regard to schoolwork. In showing how a favorable school-based information opportunity structure can compensate for inadequate informational resources at home, the analysis reveals the ways in which informational inequality is both created and sometimes overcome. By illuminating the relationships between access conditions, information opportunity structures, and types of information habitus, the article shows how synergistic use of informational resources plays a critical role in larger digital inequalities.

Keywords:

• digital inequality
• striver
• information capital
• habitus
• information habitus
• Bourdieu

Acknowledgements

My thanks go to Brian Loader for his valuable editorial work, to the reviewers for their feedback, and to the educators in my fieldsites for making the study possible. I would also like to acknowledge funding from the Santa Clara University Center for Science, Technology, and Society; Bannan Institute, Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education; SCU Internal Research Grants Program; and the SCU Faculty-Student Research Assistant Award Program.

Notes on contributor

Laura Robinson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Santa Clara University. She earned her PhD from UCLA where she held a Mellon Fellowship in Latin American Studies and received a Bourse D'Accueil at the École Normale Supérieure. In addition to holding a postdoctoral fellowship on a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation funded project at the USC Annenberg Center, Robinson has served as Visiting Assistant Professor at Cornell University and Visiting Scholar at Trinity College Dublin. Her research has earned awards from CITASA, AOIR, and NCA IICD. Robinson's current multi-year study examines digital and informational inequalities. Her other publications explore interaction and identity work, as well as new media in Brazil, France, and the United States. Her website is www.laurarobinson.org.

Notes

1. All places and names are pseudonyms. Mispronunciations and grammatical errors have been corrected when necessary for clarity.