Dynastic cores and the borrowed time of newcomers. Wealth accumulation and the Norwegian one percent

Toft, Maren; Hansen, Marianne

doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12925

Cited by 10 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…In contemporary times, business‐oriented upbringing may make interpersonal affinities in morality, values, cultural interests and outlooks more significant for the ability to jostle for position and foster “kindred world‐views” between jurists and a thriving capitalist class (Herlin‐Giret, 2021; De Keere, 2019; Flemmen et al., 2017; Bourdieu, 1987, p. 842, Toft & Hansen, 2022). Further unpacking such “homology effects” between lawyers and their clientele (Bourdieu, 1987, p. 850) may help us understand how social backgrounds stratify lawyers' ability to connect with emergent groups of power today.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nation‐builders and market architects: How social origins mold the careers of law graduates over 200 years in Norway

Toft

2023

British Journal of Sociology

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This paper examines the types of work that jurists have historically undertaken and maps how opportunities for legal practice have been shaped by social origins across three centuries: after constitutional independence in the mid‐1800s, during industrial capitalism in the mid‐1900s, and at present‐day advanced capitalism. I analyze historical archive data on law graduates from the 19th and 20th centuries in combination with administrative registry data from the 1990s onwards and employ correspondence analysis to explore how social backgrounds shape careers, considering transformations in class structures and the changing significance of juridical expertise over time. Within each period, jurists have served in very different roles including those that craft and cater to the institutional make‐up of the state and the markets. My analysis shows that the impact of social origin on occupational outcomes has undergone significant changes, mirroring shifts in the broader social structure; from the importance of legal and political capital (within regional jurisdictions) in the 19th century to the significance of economic capital as the main structuring principle, but also a greater significance of cultural capital, in contemporary times. The ability to reach the most powerful positions among law graduates—within the polity in the 19th century, and the economy in the 21st century—has been differently structured by origins. I argue that expansion of the student body, the declining standing of the university, and heightened differentiation of the social structure and the juridical field have made intimate familiarity with the business world pivotal for forging mutually beneficial alliances between jurists and the increasingly dominant capitalist class. Today, a select group of jurists have managed to connect with and contribute to the rising power of private capital. Thus, the historical tale of jurists cannot be accurately captured by notions of uniform descent from national power structures.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nation‐builders and market architects: How social origins mold the careers of law graduates over 200 years in Norway

Toft

2023

British Journal of Sociology

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“…Pfeffer and Waitkus (2021) show that Norway's Gini coefficient for wealth is remarkably high (0.813), indeed higher than for every nation included in the Luxemburg Income Study apart from US and Sweden. Toft and Hansen (2022, see also Hansen, 2014) have shown how this high level of wealth inequality follows strong dynastic elite reproduction.…”

Section: Theoretical Issuesmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…This growing inequality has significant implications in relation to age. Toft and Hansen's (2022) analysis leads us to ask whether family wealth may be associated with an intensified age divide, opposing younger people to wealthy older generations. At the same time, another divide is possibly accentuated among the young, pitching those from wealthy backgrounds who may hope to be inheritors of wealth against those who are unlikely to be recipients of such unearned largesse.…”

Section: Theoretical Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distinctions in the making: A theoretical discussion of youth and cultural capital

Prieur

Savage

Flemmen

2023

British Journal of Sociology

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The aim of this paper is to address the dynamics of contemporary cultural capital by interrogating what counts for young people as valuable cultural resources. Considerable support is given in later scholarship for Bourdieu's model of the social space, as the overall volume of economic and cultural capital combined is regularly found to be the most important axis of opposition, just as in Bourdieu's work Distinction. Yet, while Bourdieu found the second axis to be structured by an opposition between those with cultural rather than economic capital, and vice versa, many later studies instead find oppositions between the young and the old to structure the second axis. Up till now, this finding has not been adequately addressed. In this paper, we hold that considering age-related inequalities offers a powerful way of interpreting recent developments in order to understand the changing stakes of cultural capital, and also their interaction with the intensification of inequalities in economic capital. After a theoretical clarification of the relationship between cultural capital and youth, we will synthesise research on young people and explore the significance of youthful cultural consumption. We will pragmatically focus on the 15-30 years old and put a particular accent on Norwegian studies in our review, as they are the most sophisticated in this genre. Four areas are explored: the restricted role of classical culture; the appeal of popular

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“…If large fortunes are perpetuated within the family, the wealth elite is not regularly transformed through new entrants. The lack of social mobility among the wealth elite, in turn, carries the risk of causing the elite to drift away from the wider society, hampering their understanding of social realities and threatening social cohesion (Toft and Hansen 2022). Third, the historical origins of top fortunes are likely to be related to the extent to which power structures of the wealth elite are consolidated (Starr 2019).…”

Section: Original Articlementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Theories on inherited advantage argue that capitalist societies offer wealthy families plenty of channels to “hoard opportunities” and perpetuate their fortunes over generations (Beckert 2022; Hansen and Toft 2021; Tilly 1998). Accordingly, this stream of literature suggests low intergenerational mobility at the top of the wealth distribution (Medeiros and de Souza 2015; Toft and Hansen 2022). Low mobility at the top seems to hold also in the long run as, for example, Barone and Mocetti (2020:1864) provided evidence for wealth inheritance over six generations, indicating the existence of a “glass floor” protecting descendants of the super-rich from losing their fortunes.…”

Section: Previous Research On the Historical Origins Of Large Fortunesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Top Wealth and Its Historical Origins: Identifying Entrenched Fortunes by Linking Rich Lists over 100 Years

Tisch,

Ischinsky

2023

Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World

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The authors examine the historical origins of Germany’s 1,032 largest fortunes. The innovation of this research is to link a rich list from 2019 with rich lists from 1913 and genealogical data provided in Wikidata. The authors find a remarkable historical continuity of large fortunes despite two world wars, the Great Depression, regime changes, and different currency reforms. One third of the companies associated with today’s largest fortunes were founded before World War I. About 8 percent of today’s fortunes can be traced back to fortunes on rich lists from 1913. Regression analyses show that these entrenched fortunes rank on average higher on the rich list than fortunes of younger origin. Network analyses indicate that some of today’s largest fortunes are intertwined through marital lines, hinting at social closure at the top. These findings indicate that the accumulation and perpetuation of fortunes over many generations is an important feature of top wealth in Germany.

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Dynastic cores and the borrowed time of newcomers. Wealth accumulation and the Norwegian one percent

Abstract: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creat ive Commo ns Attri butio n-NonCo mmerc ial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Cited by 10 publications

References 74 publications

Nation‐builders and market architects: How social origins mold the careers of law graduates over 200 years in Norway

Nation‐builders and market architects: How social origins mold the careers of law graduates over 200 years in Norway

Distinctions in the making: A theoretical discussion of youth and cultural capital

Top Wealth and Its Historical Origins: Identifying Entrenched Fortunes by Linking Rich Lists over 100 Years

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