The New Power Elite: Inequality, Politics and Greed

by Alan Shipman, June Edmunds, Bryan Turner

Overview

Elites have always ruled – wielding inordinate power and wealth, taking decisions that shape life for the rest. In good times the ‘1%’ can hide their privilege, or use growing social mobility and economic prosperity as a justification. When times get tougher there’s a backlash. So the first years of the twenty-first century – a time of financial crashes, oligarchy and corruption in the West; persistent poverty in the south; and rising inequality everywhere – have brought elites and ‘establishments’ under unprecedented fire. Yet those swept to power by this discontent are themselves a part of the elite, attacking from within and extending rather than ending its agenda. The New Power Elite shows how major political and social change is typically driven by renegade elite fractions, who co-opt or sideline elites’ traditional enemies. It is the first book to combine the politics, economics, sociology and history of elite rule to present a compact, comprehensive account of who’s at the top, and why we let them get there.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783087877
Publisher:	Anthem Press
Publication date:	04/13/2018
Series:	Key Issues in Modern Sociology
Pages:	278
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Alan Shipman is an economist, currently with the Open University, UK, who has also worked as an emerging markets analyst, and industrial and social researcher.

June Edmunds lectures in sociology at the University of Sussex, UK, and is an affiliated senior research fellow at the Centre of Development Studies, University of Cambridge, UK.

Bryan S. Turner is professor of the sociology of religion at the Australian Catholic University, an honorary professor at the University of Potsdam, Germany, and an emeritus professor at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations; Preface; 1. Elites under Siege; 2. Power, Networks and Higher Circles; 3. Sources of Stability: Elite Circulations and Class Coalitions; 4. Rousing Rebellion: Elite Fractions and Class Divisions; 5. Politics and Money; 6. Inequality: Causes and Consequences; 7. Elites and Democracy; 8. Giveaways and Greed; Afterword: The Best and the Rest; References; Index.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

‘This book is a useful contribution to the current debates on the growing influence of the plutocracy. With its comparative and international focus, it adds an important dimension to the ongoing debates in the US and Europe.’
—Michèle Lamont, Professor of Sociology and African and African American Studies, and Director, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, USA

‘C. Wright Mills rides again, over 60 years later, in this vigorously argued analysis which is based on a powerful alliance of class and elite theory.’
—William Outhwaite, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Newcastle University, UK

Editorial Reviews

Journal of Classical Sociology

From the Publisher