Primus inter pares? The French field of power and its power elite

Denord, François; Lagneau-Ymonet, Paul; Thine, Sylvain

doi:10.1093/ser/mwx033

Cited by 29 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…This identifies a group of 423 individuals in which all were within a network reach of at least 199 of the 422 other core members. This core is akin to Mills’ (1956: 18; see also Denord et al, 2018) definition of a power elite as an ‘intricate set of overlapping cliques [that] share[s] decisions having at least national consequences’ and that serves as our empirical approximation of the effective agents on the Danish field of power.…”

Section: Methods: Constructing the Field Of Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Danish economy is negotiated by the triumvirate of the state, employer associations and unions that share control over important institutions within the legal system, pension funds, finance, research funding, education and economic policy. Scholars have already supplemented Bourdieu’s (1996) analysis of the field of power in 1970s France by constructing the field of power in Norway (Hjellbrekke et al, 2007) and contemporary France (Denord et al, 2018). While all three analyses identify vertical oppositions between the established and the newcomers in the field of power, Bourdieu’s view of a horizontal split between positions holding economic versus cultural capital appears more specific to the historical and national context of his analysis.…”

Section: Introduction: the Division Of The Labour Of Dominationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Established and the Delegated: The Division of Labour of Domination among Effective Agents on the Field of Power in Denmark

2020

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What is the relationship between the various forms of power held by elites in contemporary society? Using Bourdieu’s notion of the field of power, we address this question by exploring the division of labour of domination among contemporary Danish elites. Via a specific multiple correspondence analysis of 44 variables with 198 categories, we examine the relationship between the volume and distribution of various forms of capital held by 423 individuals at the core of Danish elite networks, arguing that they constitute effective agents in the field of power. We find three major differentiations between: (1) established and newcomers; (2) public and private forms of legitimation; and (3) rural or industrial-based, but nonetheless organisationally well connected, elites and the social elite surrounding Copenhagen state nobility. The legitimising pole of the field of power does not necessarily derive its positions from the cultural field but can also rely on delegated forms of capital.

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Section: Methods: Constructing the Field Of Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction: the Division Of The Labour Of Dominationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Established and the Delegated: The Division of Labour of Domination among Effective Agents on the Field of Power in Denmark

2020

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“…MCA is closely associated with the work of Pierre Bourdieu as a way to construct and analyse social spaces and fields (Lebaron 2009). Recently, MCA has been used to construct spaces on prosopographical populations such as central bank directors (Lebaron and Dogan 2012), French and Norwegian elites (Denord et al 2018;Hjellbrekke et al 2007) and top Swiss (Bühlmann et al 2012), Indian (Naudet et al 2018), and Danish CEO's (Ellersgaard et al 2013).…”

Section: Relational Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Craft of Elite Prosopography

Lunding

Ellersgaard

Larsen

2020

Researching Elites and Power

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“…After all, when Charles Wright Mills (1956) made his powerful sociological statements in The Power Elite, there were based on few direct observations; moreover, he somewhat downplayed the value of ethnographic accounts, at least in the case of local community studies. 6 And if we are to demonstrate the existence of a ruling class, for example, a well-designed statistical analysis is most probably the best option (Denord et al 2018).…”

Section: The Benefits and Limitations Of Observationmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Moral Obligation Meets Physical Opportunity. Studying Elite Lifestyles and Power in the Saint-Tropez Area

Bruno

Salle

2020

Researching Elites and Power

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Concluding their article defining promising lines of research for "exploring geographies of the super-rich", Iain Hay and Samantha Muller (2012, p. 85) "assert[ed] that there is a moral obligation on the part of those of us with the resources to do so, to undertake detailed analysis of the worlds shaped by the super-rich, and in which all of us live". The authors were probably not aware that French sociologists Monique Pinçon-Charlot and Michel Pinçon had given a similar exhortation a few years earlier. Claiming that "studying the privileged is a necessity", precisely owing to the various obstacles standing in the way of such a task, they added: "understanding society without comprehending the top of the social structure is impossible" (Pinçon and Pinçon-Charlot 2007, pp. 5-6 1). It was this kind of call that impelled us to take what had long been a mere laughing matter and turn it into a proper research program: a sociological (and soon also historical) study of "Saint-Tropez", more precisely the Saint-Tropez peninsula. 2 Over time, we felt increasingly compelled to undertake this research, motivated by the idea that, particularly in the context of the I. Bruno (*) Centre d'études et de recherches administratives, politiques et sociales,

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Primus inter pares? The French field of power and its power elite

Cited by 29 publications

References 61 publications

The Established and the Delegated: The Division of Labour of Domination among Effective Agents on the Field of Power in Denmark

The Established and the Delegated: The Division of Labour of Domination among Effective Agents on the Field of Power in Denmark

The Craft of Elite Prosopography

When Moral Obligation Meets Physical Opportunity. Studying Elite Lifestyles and Power in the Saint-Tropez Area

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