Deconsecration: Symbolic Sanctions, “Courts of Honour,” and the Cleansing of Denmark’s Who’s Who After the German Occupation, 1940–1945

Abstract

How may elites experience a symbolic fall from grace? Elite scholarship has typically described how symbolic structures contribute to consecrate and reinforce existing power relations. Processes of deconsecration are, however, less well described. Deconsecration as a social process is distinct from déclassement, as well as from cultural or juridical processes of exclusion. It is the loss of the very status as “elite.” We address the question of deconsecration through a historical case study of the exclusion of elite groups from the Danish Who’s Who and professional bodies in the wake of the liberation after the German occupation of Denmark 1940–1945.