 | Bruno Cousin, Sébastien Chauvin (2021)Is there a global super-bourgeoisie? Sociology Compass, 15(6), 2021. In recent decades, accelerating processes of globalization and an increase in economic inequality in most of the world’s countries have raised the question of the emergence of a new bourgeoisie integrated at the global level, sometimes described as a global super-bourgeoisie. This group would be distinguished by its unequaled level of wealth and global interconnectedness, its transnational ubiquity and concentration in the planet’s major global cities, its specific culture, consumption habits, sites of sociability and shared references, and even by class consciousness and capacity to act collectively. This article successively discusses how the social sciences have examined these various dimensions of the question and begun to provide systematic empirical answers. Keywords: class, inequality, transnationalism, bourgeoisie, super-rich, global elite, economic elites. |
Category Archives: class inequality
Entraîner les dominants (2019)
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Bruno Cousin, Sébastien Chauvin (2019)Entraîner les dominants. Tennis, yoga et service aux ultra-riches. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, n°230, 2019, p. 76-91. À partir des cas de deux professeurs particuliers exerçant auprès de clients milliardaires et multimillionnaires, cet article analyse le travail de professions de l’éducation physique qui occupent une fonction centrale dans les grandes maisons bourgeoises contemporaines, notamment dans la transmission de dispositions valorisées par les élites économiques et dans l’organisation de leur sociabilité. Après une première partie consacrée à la description détaillée de l’activité de Nathalie (professeure de yoga et masseuse) et de Benjamin (entraîneur de tennis et coach), ainsi qu’à leurs conditions d’emploi, on se penche sur leurs trajectoires et sur la socialisation précoce aux classes supérieures qui les a rendues possibles. On analyse ensuite les stratégies qu’ils déploient, notamment leur multi-territorialité, pour sélectionner et renouveler leur clientèle. Enfin, on aborde la complexité des relations interpersonnelles qu’ils entretiennent avec cette dernière, entre magistère et lexique de l’amitié. AbstractThis article is based on the study of two private teachers catering to billionaires and multi-millionaire clients. It analyzes the work of physical education specialists whose key role for contemporary high-bourgeoisie households includes helping organize their sociability and ensuring the intergenerational transmission of dispositions valued among economic elites. The first section offers a detailed description of the activities and employment conditions of Nathalie (a yoga professor and massage therapist) and Benjamin (a tennis coach). In the second section, we study their trajectories and highlight the early socialization to upperclass culture that made them possible. The third section examines the strategies they deploy – including their multi-territoriality – in order to select and renew their clientele. The concluding section focuses on the complexity of the interpersonal relations they maintain with their clients/students, which combine professional and field-specific authority with the lexicon of friendship.
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Les agences de la précarité
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Sébastien ChauvinLes agences de la précarité.
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Class, mobility and inequality in the lives of same-sex couples with mixed legal statuses (2021)
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Sébastien Chauvin, Manuela Salcedo, Timo Koren, Joël Illidge (2021)Class, mobility and inequality in the lives of same sex couples with mixed legal statuses Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 47(2), 2021, p.430-446. Seeking to overcome the heterosexual bias in marriage-migration scholarship and move beyond individualistic approaches to queer mobility, this article focuses on the lives of same-sex couples that hold unequal residence statuses. In a twofold context marked by the increasing legal recognition of same-sex families combined with heightened hurdles facing certain categories of immigrants, we examine what those simultaneous trends mean for these couples. Continue reading Class, mobility and inequality in the lives of same-sex couples with mixed legal statuses (2021) |
Culture and Inequality Podcast
Culture and Inequality Podcast (European Center for the Study of Culture and Inequality) / Fall 2020
Episode 10: Elites cultures
Giselinde Kuipers, Sebastien Chauvin (University of Lausanne) and Bruno Cousin (Sciences-Po, Paris, FR)
In this episode, Giselinde speaks with Bruno Cousin (assistant professor at SciencesPo Paris) and Sébastien Chauvin (associate prof at University of Lausanne) about the elite culture of what is popularly called ‘the top 1 percent’. Based on their research on the French Caribbean luxury destination of St Barths, social clubs in Milan, and Ashley Mears’ ethnographic work on ‘party girls’ and promoters in VIP nightclubs, they discuss questions about elite culture in a time of globalization. What do we learn from ethnographic work on the top 1 percent? How do elites manage to exploit others’ capital? How are elite distinction patterns changing in a time of globalization? Continue reading Culture and Inequality Podcast
Sociologie d’un condamné
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Sébastien Chauvin (2019)Sociologie d’un condamné. A propos de Daniel Bizeul, Martial, la rage de l’humilié (Editions Agone, Marseille, 2018). Bien avant le décès de Martial en 2010, Daniel Bizeul lui avait promis de publier un jour une sélection des milliers de pages des cahiers que le sociologue l’avait encouragé à rédiger depuis leur rencontre et en particulier depuis l’annonce de la séropositivité du jeune homme antillais en octobre 1992. Continue reading Sociologie d’un condamné |
Les migrations internationales à l’épreuve du capital social (2018)
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Hugo Bréant, Sébastien Chauvin, Ana Portilla (2018)Les migrations internationales à l’épreuve du capital social Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, n°225, décembre 2018, p.8-13. Alors que l’urgence humanitaire de la « crise des réfugié·e·s » a durablement installé une image misérabiliste de la migration internationale dans l’opinion publique, ce numéro prend le parti de s’intéresser aux ressources des migrant·e·s. En abordant la question de l’accumulation et de la gestion du capital social dans les carrières et stratégies migratoires, il entend dresser un portrait plus divers et plus réaliste des existences migrantes et éviter ainsi de forger une représentation monolithique des mobilités. Sans oublier les vulnérabilités qui président à nombre de déplacements internationaux, il insiste sur les inégalités à l’œuvre parmi les acteurs et actrices de ces mobilités. Continue reading Les migrations internationales à l’épreuve du capital social (2018) |
Social Class, Migration Policy and Migrant Strategies: An Introduction
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Saskia Bonjour, Sébastien Chauvin (2018)Social Class, Migration Policy and Migrant Strategies: An Introduction International Migration, vol.56, n.4, August 2018, p. 5-18. This introduction traces class at the interface between migration policy and migrant strategies. Scholarship on the politics of migration and citizenship has thus far largely neglected class. In contrast, we contend that discourses on migration, integration and citizenship are inevitably classed. Assessed through seemingly heterogeneous criteria of “merit” and “performance”, class serves as an analytical connector between economic and identity rationales which intersect in all migration policies, including those regulating family and humanitarian admission. Class-selective policy frames can function as constraints maintaining some aspiring migrants into immobility or channeling different groups of migrants into separate and unequal incorporation routes. Yet, policy frames can also serve as resources to strategize with as migrants navigate and perform gendered and classed expectations embedded into receiving-country migration regimes. We conclude that connecting policy with migrant strategies is key to reintroducing class without naturalizing classed strategies of mobility. Continue reading Social Class, Migration Policy and Migrant Strategies: An Introduction |
Euro-Caribbean Societies in the 21st Century
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Sébastien Chauvin, Peter Clegg, Bruno Cousin eds. (2018)Euro-Caribbean Societies in the 21st Century:Offshore finance, local élites and contentious politicsRoutledge, 2018. This edited collection examines the realities of the last remnants of the European colonial empires in the Caribbean, namely the British, Dutch and French overseas territories. With chapters by Matthew L. Bishop, J. A. Roy Bodden, Audrey Célestine, Peter Clegg, Gérard Collomb, Justin Daniel, Lammert de Jong, May Hen, Edenz Maurice, Guy Numa, Genève Phillip, Chelsea Schields, Ron van der Veer, Wouter Veenendaal and William Vlcek. Table of Contents + Introduction Continue reading Euro-Caribbean Societies in the 21st Century |
Old Money, Networks and Distinction (2017)
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Bruno Cousin, Sébastien Chauvin (2016)Old Money, Networks and Distinction: The Social and Service Clubs of Milan’s Upper Classes. Ch.8 in Cities and the Super-Rich, edited by Ray Forrest, Bart Wissink and Sin Yee Koh, Palgrave MacMillan, 2017. Upper-class social clubs in European metropolises have mostly been described through isolated monographs. Instead, this chapter on Milan studies them relationally. Extending the Bourdieusian approach, we show that social (and some service) clubs in Italy’s economic capital city form a relatively coherent space of distinction. |
Globalizing forms of elite sociability
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Bruno Cousin, Sébastien Chauvin (2014)Globalizing forms of elite sociability: Varieties of cosmopolitanism in Paris social clubs.Ethnic and Racial Studies, 37(12): 2209-2225. This article examines the cultivation of transnational connections, cosmopolitanism and global class consciousness among members of elite social clubs in Paris. Continue reading Globalizing forms of elite sociability |
L’intersectionnalité contre l’intersection (2015)
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Sébastien Chauvin, Alexandre Jaunait (2015)L’intersectionnalité contre l’intersectionRaisons Politiques, 15(2): 55-74. Is the notion of intersectionality doomed to being part of the problem it depicts? Intersectionality theory was not developed to merely point at intersections but to capture subject positions made invisible by dominant systems of normative representation. Continue reading L’intersectionnalité contre l’intersection (2015) |
Chicago et l’exception urbaine américaine (2014)
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Sebastien Chauvin (2014)“Chicago et l’exception urbaine américaine”. Review of: Andrew Diamond, Pap Ndiaye, Histoire de Chicago. Paris: Fayard, 2013. La Vie des idées, December 2014. ISSN : 2105-3030. URL : http://www.laviedesidees.fr/Chicago-et-l-exception-urbaine.html Continue reading Chicago et l’exception urbaine américaine (2014) |
Grands cercles et sociabilité des élites mondiales (2016)
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Bruno Cousin, Sébastien Chauvin (2016)Grands cercles et sociabilité des élites mondialesForthcoming in Qui gouverne le monde ? L’état du monde 2017. Edited by Bertrand Badie and Dominique Vidal. Paris: La découverte, 2016 La forme « club » ou « cercle », qui combine la cooptation collective de chacun des membres et l’égalité formelle entre ces derniers, est l’une des institutions de sociabilité qui a le plus contribué à structurer les champs du pouvoir occidentaux durant la période moderne et contemporaine. Continue reading Grands cercles et sociabilité des élites mondiales (2016) |
Vers une hyper-bourgeoisie globalisée ?
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Bruno Cousin, Sébastien Chauvin (2015)Vers une hyper-bourgeoisie globalisée ?Pp. 148-154 in Un monde d’inégalités. L’état du monde 2016. Edited by Bertrand Badie and Dominique Vidal. Paris: La découverte, 2015. In the past decades, accelerating processes of globalization and increasing economic inequality in most of the world’s countries raised the issue of the emergence of new global dominant class. Continue reading Vers une hyper-bourgeoisie globalisée ? |
Islanders, Immigrants and Millionnaires
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Bruno Cousin, Sébastien Chauvin (2013)Islanders, Immigrants and Millionaires: The Dynamics of Upper-Class Segregation in St. Barts.Pp. 186-200 in Geographies of the Super-Rich. Edited by Iain Hay. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. Saint-Barthélemy is one of the most exclusive seaside resorts in the world. The three groups interacting locally – historic Saint-Barths, metropolitan immigrants, and super-rich vacationers or villa owners – are all overwhelmingly white. Their cohabitation maintains the elitist character of the island, while obliterating most of its Caribbean heritage. St. Barts’ resort identity is structured around a generic brand of exoticism, local variation of a global space of upper-class leisure. By insisting on the multi-class co-production of elite seaside locations, we lay emphasis on the roles of service relations and upper-class dynamics of distinction in the reconfiguration of local cultures within the places patronized by the super-rich. |
L’économie symbolique du capital social
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Bruno Cousin, Sébastien Chauvin (2012)L’économie symbolique du capital social.
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Representing the intersection in France and America
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Alexandre Jaunait, Sebastien Chauvin (2012)Representing the Intersection in France and America: Theories of Intersectionality Meet Social Science.Revue Française de Science Politique (English-language edition), 62(1): 1-15. This article retraces the comparative genealogy of intersectionality theory in the United States and in France since the 1970s, insisting on the heritage of Marxist thought in French Materialistic feminism. We describe how its appropriation in social scientific inquiry allowed reformulating what were normative problems specific to the politico-juridical sphere, into principles of empirical investigation. Continue reading Representing the intersection in France and America |
L’entre-soi élitaire à Saint-Barthélemy
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Bruno Cousin, Sebastien Chauvin (2012)L’entre-soi élitaire à Saint-BarthélemyEthnologie Française, 42(2), 335-345. |
La dimension symbolique du capital: Les grands cercles et Rotary Clubs de Milan
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Bruno Cousin, Sebastien Chauvin (2010)La dimension symbolique du capital social:
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Représenter l’intersection
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Alexandre Jaunait, Sebastien Chauvin (2012)Représenter l’intersection.
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Interview by Libération on Tim Cook’s coming out (31 October 2014)
Interview by Libération (France) on coming out and the powerful — following Tim Cook’s announcement
31 October 2014
INTERVIEW
Pour le sociologue Sébastien Chauvin, la déclaration du PDG du groupe informatique intervient alors que les entreprises américaines restent marquées par une culture relativement sexiste au moment où les Etats-Unis débattent des droits LGBT.
A 53 ans, Tim Cook, le patron d’Apple, a fait son coming out par le biais d’une tribune publiée sur le site du magazine économique Business Week. Il y explique qu’il est «fier d’être gay» et qu’il considère que c’est l’une des plus belles choses que «Dieu lui a données».
Sébastien Chauvin, sociologue à l’université d’Amsterdam et coauteur de Sociologie de lhomosexualité (La Découverte, 10 euros), analyse l’importance d’une telle annonce pour la communauté gay. Continue reading Interview by Libération on Tim Cook’s coming out (31 October 2014)
Translation: Loïc Wacquant, “Reading Bourdieu’s ‘Capital'”
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Sébastien Chauvin (2004, translator)Loïc Wacquant, “Lire ‘Le Capital’ de Pierre Bourdieu”, in Louis Pinto, Gisèle Sapiro, Patrick Champagne (eds.), Pierre Bourdieu sociologue, Paris, Fayard, 2004.Translation of the foreword to Pierre Bourdieu, The State Nobility. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997, p. ix-xii. |
Loïc Wacquant, “Les deux visages du ghetto”
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Sébastien Chauvin (2005, translator)Translation of: “Ghetto” in Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes (eds.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, London, Pergamon Press, 2004. |