Sociology of Elites

Where to find the readings: = Blackboard course materials; = hyperlink; = Recommended for purchase; = E-reserves.

This six-week mini-seminar provides a general introduction to the sociology of elites, focused chiefly, although not exclusively, on American society. The structure is simple. We start out with a session on elite education and the problem of meritocracy. Then we step back to consider general theoretical issues about elites, including how theories have evolved and stand today. The following three sessions take up elites in relation to three different spheres: the economy, politics, and culture. The final session deals with the changing structure and make-up of elites, bringing together threads from preceding classes.

Except for the first session, the required reading averages about one hundred pages per week. The assignment for the first session, 260 pages from Shamus Khan, Jerome Karabel, and Henry Louis Gates, should not be burdensome. Those selections are highly readable and offer an opportunity for reflecting on our own situation in an elite university. Depending on your mood, you may find some of the material about Princeton in the Karabel chapters to be outrageous or hilarious, or both. This is the only week with required reading from books recommended for purchase (though the Karabel selections will be available on e-reserves).

The main requirement for the course, besides participating in the discussions, is a weekly memo about the readings (you can skip one week, so a total of five memos). These can each be from 500 to 750 words. You can also use one of your memos to focus on supplementary readings, either from those listed or others related to the subject at hand. At the end of the course, please put together all five memos in one file, with a cover note on a few takeaways from the seminar that you think are particularly important.

Week One (September 3). Introduction. Elite education and the problem of meritocracy.[260 pp.]
Shamus Khan, Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 1-113, 151-92, 201-05.
Jerome Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006), 1-76, 536-557.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., "Joining the Black Overclass at Yale University," Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (Spring, 1996), 95-100.

Related supplementary readings on elites, education, and access to elite status
Lauren A. Rivera, Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).
Anthony Abraham Jack, The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019).
Steven B. Levine, "The Rise of American Boarding Schools and the Development of a National Upper Class," Social Problems (1980) 28(1): 63-94.

Week Two (September 10). General Theoretical Issues (108 pp.).
Max Weber, "Class, Status, and Party" in Weber, Economy and Society , eds., Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), 2: 926-939.
C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), 3-9.
Shamus Rahman Khan, "The Sociology of Elites," Annual Review of Sociology (2012), 38(1: 361-77.
Jeffrey A. Winters, Oligarchy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 1-40.
Mark Mizruchi, The Fracturing of the American Corporate Elite (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 266-72. [More from this book is available as an optional reading in Week Three.]

Related supplementary readings on theoretical issues
Mayer N. Zald and Michael Lounsbury, "The Wizards of Oz: Towards an Institutional Approach to Elites, Expertise and Command Posts," Organization Studies (2010),31(07): 963-996.
Janine R. Wedel, "From Power Elites to Influence Elites: Resetting Elite Studies for the 21st Century," Theory, Culture & Society (2017), 34(5-6):153-178.

Week Three(September 17). Elites and the Economy (41 pages plus Option A or B)
Branco Milanovic, Global Inequality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 10-45. ("The Rise of the Global Middle Class and Global Plutocrats").
Daniel Bell, "The Breakup of Family Capitalism," in The End of Ideology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Pres, 1988 [1960]), 39-45.

Option 3A: The Corporate Elite
Mizruchi, The Fracturing of the American Corporate Elite, 22-80, 139-224, 266-88.

Option 3B: Wealth and Rules of Inheritance
Paul Starr, Entrenchment: Wealth, Power, and Constitution of Democratic Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019), 32-55.
Philipp Korom, Mark Lutter, and Jens Beckert, "The Enduring Importance of Family Wealth: Evidence from the Forbes 400, 1982 to 2013," Social Science Research 65 (2017): 75-95.

Related supplementary readings on elites and the economy
Johan S. G. Chu and Gerald F. Davis, "Who Killed the Inner Circle? The Decline of the American Corporate Interlock Network," American Journal of Sociology (2016) 122(3): 714-54.
Sherwin Rosen, "The Economics of Superstars," American Economic Review (1981), 71 (5): 845- 858.
Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, "Wealth Inequality in the United States Since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data," Quarterly Journal of Economics (2016), 131: 519-78.
Alexandra Killewald, Fabian T. Pfeffer,Jared N. Schachner, "Wealth Inequality and Accumulation," Annual Review of Sociology(2017),43(1):379-404.
Brooke Harrington, Capital without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).
Jens Beckert, Inherited Wealth (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).


Supplementary readings on the social worlds of the superrich
Rachel Sherman, Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017).
Ashley Mears, Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit(Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 2020).

Week Four(September 24). Oligarchy and Democracy [139 pages]
Starr, Entrenchment, 105-33.
Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Henry E. Brady, The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 160-64; 172-76, 312-38.
Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens," Perspectives on Politics (2014), 12(3): 564-81.
Thomas Piketty, "Brahmin Left vs Merchant Right: Rising Inequality and the Changing Structure of Political Conflict. Evidence from France, Britain and the US 1948-2017," 2018.

Related supplementary readings on oligarchy and democracy
Robert Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (New York: Free Press, 1968 [1911]).
Benjamin I. Page, Larry M. Bartels, and Jason Seawright, "Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans," Perspectives on Politics (2013) 11(01):51-73.
Lee Drutman, The Business of America is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (New York: Doubleday, 2016).
Kenneth Scheve and David Stasavage, Taxing the Rich (Princeton University Press, 2016).


Related supplementary readings on conservative elites
Daniel Ziblatt, Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
D. Michael Lindsay, Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
Evan Osnos, "How Greenwich Republicans Came to Love Trump," New Yorker, May 3, 2020.

Week Five (October 1). Elite culture and consumption [84 pages]
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York, New York: Viking, 1967 [1899]), 22-26, 31-39, 68-79, 167-80.
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement [sic] of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 1-7, 13-28.
Richard A. Peterson and Roger M. Kern, "Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore" American Sociological Review (1996), 61(5): 900-907.
Giana M. Eckhardt, Russell W. Belk and Jonathan A.J. Wilson, "The Rise of Inconspicuous Consumption," Journal of Marketing Management (2015), 31 (7-8): 807-826.
Kerwin Kofi Charles et al., "Race and Conspicuous Consumption," Quarterly Journal of Economics (2009), 124: 425-67.

Related supplementary readings on elite culture
Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).
Paul DiMaggio, "Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth-Century Boston: The Creation of an Organizational Base for High Culture in America," Media, Culture & Society (1982) 4(1):33-50.
Paul DiMaggio, "Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth-Century Boston, Part II: The Classification and Framing of American Art," Media, Culture & Society (1982), 4(4): 303-22.
Fabien Accominotti, Shamus R. Khan, and Adam Storer, "How Cultural Capital Emerged in Gilded Age America: Musical Purification and Cross-Class Inclusion at the New York Philharmonic," American Journal of Sociology (2018), 123(6):1743-83.
Francie Ostrower, Trustees of Culture: Power, Wealth, and Status on Elite Arts Boards (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).


Related supplementary readings on culture and consumption
Derek D. Rucker and Adam D. Galinsky, "Compensatory Consumption," in Ayalla A. Ruvio and Russell W. Belk, eds. The Routledge Companion to Identity and Consumption (London: Routledge, 2013), 207-15.

Week Six (October 8). Old and New Elites
E. Digby Baltzell, The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy & Caste in America (New York, NY: Random House, 1964), Ch. 1.
Richard L. Zweigenhaft and G. William Domhoff, Diversity in the Power Elite, 3rd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), 1-14 ("The Ironies and Unfulfilled Promises of Diversity") and 87-128 ("Blacks in the Power Elite").
John Allen,"The Circulation of Financial Elites," in Mat Coleman and John Agnew, eds. Handbook of the Geographies of Power. Research Handbooks in Geography. (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2018), 178–202.

Related readings
Willard B, Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880-1920 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990).