Elites E-Book

Murray Milner

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 409

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

At a time when significant social status, economic resources, and political opportunities seem to become ever more unequally distributed and only available to a few, this book represents the first systematic effort in recent years to develop a sociological model of elites and non-elites. In outlining a new typology of economic, political, and cultural elites, as well as drawing attention to the important role of non-elites, this accessibly written book provides novel insights into the structure of historical and contemporary societies.

Milner identifies the sources and structures of economic, political, and cultural power, and investigates patterns of cooperation and conflict between and within elite groups. Analyzing politicians and propagandists, landowners and capitalists, national heroes and celebrities, ordinary folks and outcasts, the book applies its model to three distinctly different societies – ancient India, Classical Athens, and the contemporary United States – highlighting important structural commonalities across these otherwise very dissimilar societies.

A significant contribution to scholarship, Elites will also be useful for an array of courses in sociology, political science, and history.

Leseprobe

For the non-elites

Copyright © Murray Milner, Jr. 2015

The right of Murray Milner, Jr. to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2015 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

350 Main Street

Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-7182-6

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-7183-3 (pb)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8952-4 (epub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8951-7 (mobi)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Milner, Murray.

    Elites : a general model / Murray Milner, Jr.

        pages cm

    Includes bibliographical references.

    ISBN 978-0-7456-7182-6 (hardback : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-0-7456-7183-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)    1.  Elite (Social sciences)    2.  Power (Social sciences)    3.  Elite (Social sciences)–United States.    4.  Power (Social sciences)–United States.    5.  Elite (Social sciences)–India.    6.  Power (Social sciences)–India.    I.  Title.

    HM1263.M554 2014

    305.5′20973–dc23

                                                           2014015223

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Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

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Preface

I am always a bit suspicious of authors' descriptions of why they write what they do, including my own accounts. There is a tendency for most of us to underestimate the effects of social context, contingency, luck, and providence in what has happened – at least when it is linked to the completion of a project for which we can and must take credit. With this reservation and warning, I want to state what I now see as the influences that led to this book. While I was never a scholar who specialized in studying sociology's intellectual ancestors, for a number of years I taught courses in classical social theory. I was always struck by the differences in how Marx, Pareto, and Weber understood the link between social inequality, social conflict, and social change. Each one was extremely insightful, but I sensed that they told only part of the story. It was a number of years, however, before I considered trying to create a more complete picture. The second stimulus to this book came out of my study of the Indian caste system. The idealized indigenous description of castes – at least by those from privileged castes – draws on what is usually referred to as the varna system that suggests that there are four social categories of people and each one is called upon to carry out a particular social function. This scheme has been influential for several thousand years even though there is only the vaguest link between this idealized description and the actual organization of castes in village India. It was the interactions between these two stimuli – my questions about classical theories and my puzzle about how something as inaccurate as the varna system could continue to be the standard description of the caste system – that led to this book.

I also frequently taught courses in social inequality and became reasonably familiar with the literature on contemporary “power elites” and “ruling classes.” I often agreed with this literature – I think power in many contemporary societies is far too concentrated and unchecked – but the questions that I was asking seemed unaddressed. It seemed to me that the concentration of power, and many other important phenomena, derived, in part, from the patterns of conflict and cooperation between various types of elites and between elites and non-elites. Moreover, recurring patterns seemed to exist across a number of very different societies. That is a central focus of this book. There are three additional emphases. First, most treatments of elites and ruling classes do not give enough attention to non-elites. Second, elite theory tends to focus on economic and political elites – who are obviously important – but to ignore other important categories of elites. Third, class analysis can usefully be subsumed within a model of elites. To deal with these issues I am proposing a new model of elites and non-elites. The sources, content, and application of this model to three very different societies is the subject of this book.

I am indebted to many people: some because they encouraged me, some because they made me think harder about what I was doing, and some for a lifetime of personal support. To name all of these would both strain my memory and bore my readers, but some must be named. I learned much from the graduate students in a course I taught on several occasions called Elites and Non-elites. Paul Kingston, Simone Polillo, and Rae Blumberg provided useful critiques on earlier abbreviated versions of this work. Even though much of the year he lives in Italy, my good friend Gianfranco Poggi has phoned about once a month, in part to inquire about how the work is progressing, implicitly providing a much needed and much appreciated reminder that I needed to get the book finished. Jon D. Mikalson of my university's Classics Department provided invaluable advice and guidance, including reading several versions of the chapter on Classical Athens. He was the very model of a good colleague. Another longtime colleague James Davidson Hunter has provided me an office and encouragement at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, an especially congenial and stimulating work setting. Mieke Thomeer and Megan Quetsch served as outstanding undergraduate research assistants and were of great help in finding sources and proofreading. I am also appreciative of the help and guidance provided by Jonathan Skerrett of Polity Press and the careful copyediting of Ian Tuttle. As always, I am indebted to Sylvia Milner for a lifetime of companionship.

1Introduction

Introduction

Two of the recurring issues in social theory are (1) who has power and (2) how does the exercise of such power shape subsequent events? In an attempt to answer these questions, analysts have drawn on the concepts of class and elite. Sometimes these are made more specific by notions of ruling class and power elite. Often the analyses of classes and elites are linked to implicit or explicit arguments about what produces or limits social change. Some of the factors focused upon include production technology, weaponry, demography, and culture. The notions of class and elites have produced insights into the nature and direction of social life, but they seem increasingly inadequate to understand the complexity of contemporary social life. Moreover, they have been inadequate for understanding both the commonalities and the differences between societies, and between the past and the present.

The purpose of this book is to improve the analytical tools for addressing such problems by proposing a new model of elites and non-elites. The model suggests that it is important to look at the relationship between different types of elites and between elites and non-elites. The aim is to create a model that is general enough to usefully analyze a variety of societies and historical periods without lapsing into a philosophy of history, which already “knows” what the future will bring. While serious intellectual endeavors build upon the work of previous scholars, in my opinion this too often leads to a kind of scholasticism that makes new work more arcane and inaccessible than it needs to be.

Much if not most of the literature about elites focuses on how concentrated or dispersed power is in a particular society or community or how the actions of those with power have shaped the past or will shape the future. While I do not completely ignore the first question my primary focus is on the second question. My approach to answering the second question does not focus on studying the biographies of past elites to explain the past, or interviewing current elites to predict the future. Rather, I look at the relationship between different types of elites and non-elites in such a way that we can begin to see patterns that cut across multiple societies and how these patterns are related to key social changes. I am especially influenced by Max Weber's notion that there are three main types of power: political power, economic power, and status power. Elites typically specialize in one of these types of power and in different cultures and historical periods the type of power and the type of elite that is most prominent can vary. I want to avoid the tendency to assume that a particular category of elites is always the most powerful, or that the future is predetermined. This has been the tendency of both Marxism and the elite theory. Marx assumed that history was driven primarily by class conflict. In capitalist societies the proletariat would be the key mover of history by bringing about a revolution and the eventual establishment of communism, which would eliminate class and class conflict. Elite theorists tended to assume the opposite. Elites make history and for the most part others were primarily their pawns. Any apparent moves toward egalitarianism, such as electoral democracies, were largely illusory and eventually succumbed to what Robert Michels called the “iron law of oligarchy.” Who made up the elite may change, but real power was always held by a relatively small group. In contrast, the approach I am proposing attempts to avoid notions of inevitability – whether they are “optimistic” or “pessimistic” ones. The future is shaped by the past, but not determined by it. To paraphrase Marx's famous epigram, people make their own history, but they do not make it just as they want.