Privileged Brotherhoods

Privileged Brotherhoods offers an unprecedented look inside the hidden world of elite all-boys schools in the United States. These institutions have long shaped the nation’s most powerful men but have largely escaped critical scrutiny.

Drawing on extensive and immersive fieldwork, Adam Howard reveals how these schools function as incubators of elite masculinity, instilling in their students a sense of entitlement, competitive drive, and loyalty to powerful male networks. At the heart of this process are “brotherhoods”: informal institutions molding boys into men prepared to defend privilege and resist challenges to traditional power structures. Through compelling analysis and vivid storytelling, Howard traces how the relations and practices of elite masculinity cultivated in these settings extend their influence into political, economic, and cultural life well beyond the school gates.

Privileged Brotherhoods situates elite all-boys schools within broader debates on class reproduction and gender norms, revealing how these institutions quietly reproduce systems of dominance in contemporary society.