Description du projet
Étudier de plus près les «moteurs» de l’inégalité
Dans de nombreux pays, la composition des élites s’est modifiée au fil des années. Puisque les élites sont souvent considérées comme les moteurs de l’inégalité, comment ces changements ont-ils influencé la production des inégalités? Quel rôle les grands bouleversements sociaux, politiques et économiques ont-ils joué au cours des deux derniers siècles? Ces questions et d’autres encore seront abordées dans le cadre du projet CHANGINGELITES, financé par l’UE. Il créera un catalogue des élites à combiner avec des informations sur les écoles, les adhésions à des clubs, la richesse des parents, le capital économique et la structure familiale. Le projet permettra de faire des recherches sur 120 000 personnes nées depuis 1800. Les chercheurs mèneront également 100 entretiens avec des membres de la classe des élites. Les résultats mettront en lumière la façon dont la composition sociale des élites a changé au fil du temps et comment les inégalités sont produites.
Objectif
Elites reveal the nature of inequality, allowing us to see the underlying structure of society. But, elites can also be the engines of inequality, driving forward changes ensuring the accumulation of power. So, when the people occupying elite positions change it says something about how the production of inequalities may have changed too. Most would agree (despite the paucity of data) that elites are different today than they were; but, what is contested is whether such changes signal a radical restructuring of the processes of elite formation. Two questions remain unresolved: 1) how has the composition of elites changed over time? and 2) did the major social, political, and economic upheavals of the last 200 years reconfigure elites through altering processes of elite formation? It has been difficult to answer these questions because of limited longitudinal data on elites. CHANGINGELITES will address these questions by creating a catalogue of the elite that is without equal in its empirical and temporal scope. This data set will combine information on education (schools and universities), club membership, parental wealth, economic capital, and family structure for around 120,000 people born since 1800. Alongside this data, we will also conduct 100 interviews with elites born in different periods, illuminating the varied trajectories that underpin this huge historical database. CHANGINGELITES will both shed light on the social composition of elites over time and seek to explain the changes and continuities within elites by exploring how institutional and policy shifts constrain and enable processes of elite reproduction. This ambitious, interdisciplinary study will radically alter our understanding of elite reproduction but, more than this, it will speak to a contradiction seen in many countries recently between the opening up of elite institutions and the massive accumulation of wealth, and in so doing will seek new ways to understand how inequalities are produced.
Champ scientifique
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
ERC-STG - Starting GrantInstitution d’accueil
OX1 2JD Oxford
Royaume-Uni