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How can the existence of elites be compatible with democratic governance? Any democratic society is inevitably confronted by this basic question. This book reviews existing research on elites and their interactions with those around them. How the recruitment to elites changes in the long run according to class and gender is one of the core themes of the present volume. Other topics explored include the relationship between elites and the population, collective action and elite cohesion, and elites and democracy. The approach is multinational, with examples provided from countries around the world. This is a valuable book for social science students and researchers of many disciplines, including sociology, political science and psychology. It offers a review on historical and current research on elites in society and includes an extensive discussion of class and gender. Examples from countries in different parts of the world allow for international insights.

This compelling and convincing study, the capstone of decades of research, argues that political regimes are created and sustained by elites. Liberal democracies are no exception; they depend, above all, on the formation and persistence of consensually united elites. John Higley and Michael Burton explore the circumstances and ways in which such elites have formed in the modern world. They identify pressures that may cause a basic change in the structure and functioning of elites in established liberal democracies, and they ask if the elites cluster around George W. Bush are a harbinger of thi

1. Introduction : the movement of the few / Thomas Birtchnell and Javier Caletrio -- 2. Elsewhere : tracking the mobile lives of globals / Anthony Elliott -- 3. Wealth segmentation and the mobilities of the super-rich : a conceptual framework / Jonathan V. Beaverstock and James R. Faulconbridge -- 4. Elite formation in the third industrial revolution / Thomas Birtchnell, Gil Viry and John Urry -- 5. Aeromobile elites : private business aviation and the global economy / Lucy Budd -- 6. Super-rich lifestyles / Mike Featherstone -- 7. The ease of mobility / Shamus Rahman Khan -- 8. The uneven pragmatics of "affordable" luxury tourism in inland Yucatan (Mexico) / Matilde Cordoba Azcarate, Ana Garcia Silberman and Juan Cordoba Ordonez -- 9. Visible-invisible : the social semiotics of labour in luxury tourism / Crispin Thurlow and Adam Jaworski -- 10. "This is not me" : conspicuous consumption and the travel aspirations of the European middle classes / Javier Caletrio -- 11. Tracing the super rich and their mobilities in a Scandinavian welfare state / Malene Freudendal-Pedersen -- 12. The super-rich and offshore worlds / John Urry -- 13. Epilogue : the bodies, spaces and tempo of elite formations / Mimi Sheller -- 14. Postscript : elite mobilities and critique / Andrew Sayer.

Recent Western literature concerning the political determinants of economic and social outcomes has primarily concentrated on regime types and the effectiveness of state institutions. While this literature has been influential among scholars of and in the Middle East and North Africa, there has also been an emphasis in the region on the interests and networks of economic and political elites—the interactions between rulers, elites, and the broader citizenry—to explain divergent policy outcomes. This is largely due to the inability of dominant mainstream institutional and structural theories to explain much of what has been observed in the region, viewing it as exceptional in its authoritarianism and resistance to global trends. In fact, the seeds for a more sophisticated understanding can be found in the literature on the Arab world that emphasizes relational dynamics between political and economic actors. Synthesizing the insights of scholars of the region has the potential to contribute more broadly to global debates on how political factors and conditions within states shape the quality of life experienced by their residents. Such a shift to viewing regimes as networks provides a useful framework for bridging the broader trends in political science with the work emanating from scholarship on the Middle East and North Africa.

"This volume presents a network of social power, indicating that theories inspired by C.Wright Mills are far more accurate views about power in America than those of Mills's opponents.Dr. Domhoff shows how and why coalitions within the power elite have involved themselves in such policy issues as the Social Security Act (1935) and the Employment Act (1946), and how the National Labor Relations Act (1935) could pass against the opposition of every major corporation. The book descri bes how experts worked closely with the power elite in shaping the plansfor a post-World War II world economic order, in good part realized during the past 30 years. Arguments are advanced that the fat cats who support the Democrats cannot be understood in terms of narrow self-interest, and that moderate conservatives dominated policy-making under Reagan."--Provided by publisher.

This book revisits the modern history of Poland, from the perspective of its social sciences. The book makes this case study a model for the application of Bourdieus approach to the historical analysis of non-core Western societies. The book is, in other words, a reflexive study of the application of Bourdieus social theory. At the same time, it also critically studies the application of Western social theory in Poland, which is largely seen as a peripheral country. The study of Polish social sciences, with particular emphasis on linguistics and literary studies, points to the peculiar dynamics of peripheral intellectual and academic fields and their external dependencies. These insights offer a critical extension of Bourdieus theory of state and social elites beyond the Western core focusing on how the theories can be used in the reinterpretation and expansion of post-colonial theory, global history and comparative studies of post-communism. The book will be suitable for scholars and students of all those interested in the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, global historical sociology, societies in Central and Eastern, socio-linguistics, literary studies and political sociology.