Affiliation:
1. University College Dublin, Ireland
2. Maynooth University, Ireland
Abstract
While the concept of a ‘financial elite’ has become prominent within politics and the social sciences, it is not clear what value it holds for the analysis of inequalities of income, wealth and power under financial capitalism. Who are the financial elite, and what distinguishes them from other economically powerful groups? We delineate ‘distributive’, ‘categorical’ and ‘relational’ approaches to financial elites, arguing that various unresolved tensions have hampered clarification of the differentia specifica of the concept, and blunted its normative significance. We develop a new concept of financial elites that combines insights from elite studies and financialisation studies. We argue that the financial elite possess not only high incomes, but income primarily derived from ‘rentier’ channels, as endowed by the institutional structures of financialisation. Financial elites demonstrate the capacity not only to capitalise on these new accumulation channels, but to shape the institutional and regulatory landscapes in which they operate.
Subject
Sociology and Political Science
Cited by
2 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献