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Abstract
Historically crafted narrowly for the so-called best and brightest, postsecondary honors education is undergoing a changing construction of what honors is and who it is for, led by the efforts of honors practitioners to open honors to those who have and still are excluded from it. Informed by Bourdieu’s theoretical system, I conceptualize these two constructions as the Honors 1.0 and 2.0 narratives. Using data from a 9-month field study, including 90 interviews, 150 hours of observations, and hundreds of documents, I explore the 2.0 construction of honors through an ethnographic case study of a single program at a large, public, less-selective research university. My study suggests that, despite significant changes to honors structures, a persistent misunderstanding of this changing construction prevents qualified students from seeing honors as something for them and accessing the benefits that participation can provide. This misrecognition allows social reproductive patterns to continue under the guise of student choice, obscuring the role of information and socialization in shaping who chooses to join. Drawing on lessons learned from Big State University’s program’s attempts at challenging this misrecognition, I conclude with suggestions to inform the honors community as they work to interrupt students’ misrecognition of their fit for this newer, more open version of honors and the students it serves.