As the main and most comprehensive undergraduate course on economic elites, this class is an introduction to several streams of cutting-edge sociological research on the latter. It presents and discusses the definition of economic elites in terms of organizational positions, wealth, multiple forms of capital and/or class. It explores the different quantitative approaches to describe and study national and transnational business elites, as well as their relations with other fractions of a larger power elite, using – among other methods – network and correspondence analyses. It also draws upon the many contributions of cultural sociology to the understanding of the meaning-making processes and the symbolic economy underlying the professional habitus, the morals, the consumption patterns and the philanthropic practices of these elites.
Bruno COUSIN
Cours magistral seul
English
Spring 2024-2025
Your overall grade will be determined by two assignments: a written exam 50 % and an oral examination 50 %.
Bruno Cousin, Shamus Khan and Ashley Mears. 2018. Theoretical and methodological pathways for research on elites Socio-Economic Review 16(2): 225-249.
François Denord, Paul Lagneau-Ymonet and Sylvain Thine. 2018. Primus inter pares? The French field of power and its power elite Socio-Economic Review 16(2): 277-306.
Jill E. Yavorsky, Lisa A. Keister, Yue Qian and Michael Nau. 2019. Women in the One Percent: Gender dynamics in top income positions American Sociological Review 84(1): 54-81.
Michel Anteby. 2016. The ideology of silence at the Harvard Business School: Structuring faculty's teaching tasks for moral relativism Pp. 103-121, in Lisa E. Cohen, M. Diane Burton and Michael Lounsbury, The Structuring of Work in Organizations. Leeds: