The Di Tella Family, Art Philanthropy, and the Legitimation of Elite Status

The Di Tella family owned one of the largest industrial emporiums of Argentina and in 1958 decided to use part of their fortune to create the Torcuato Di Tella Institute. In 1962, the Institute collaborated with the Rockefeller Foundation to create a music center, CLAEM, under the direction of Alberto Ginastera. This chapter examines the ways in which avant-garde music, and art in general, was relevant to the Di Tella family at a time when they were in the process of reconfiguring their elite identity. It shows the complex and often contradictory positions of Guido and Torcuato S. Di Tella as they legitimized their status and associated the Di Tella name not just with refrigerators and automobiles, but also with contemporary arts. Built upon oral histories, this chapter explores the social meaning and value of philanthropic practices for the Di Tella brothers. The complex picture painted by this story underlines the need to understand elites as dynamic and not as static or homogeneous social groups.

The Elite Global Citizen: How Wealth Shapes Cosmopolitan Identity

While research in social psychology has shown that cosmopolitan identity is associated with charitable intentions, theorists from the broader social sciences argue that cosmopolitan identities are elite identities; enabled by, and reflective of, wealth. In five studies, we provide the first empirical examination of how wealth shapes the cosmopolitan identity, and how this elite identity in turn influences people’s motives for charitable giving. Using data from the World Values Survey, Study 1 showed a positive association between wealth and cosmopolitan identity across 60 national samples. Study 2 demonstrated that wealth positively predicted cosmopolitan identity, even when controlling for education, overseas travel, political attitudes, and national identification. We then drew on an Australian community sample to shed light on the mediating role of psychological mastery — as measured by self-efficacy, self-esteem, and social power — in accounting for the positive association between wealth and cosmopolitan identity (Study 3). Causal evidence for our presumed pathway was demonstrated by experimentally manipulating participants’ wealth (Study 4). Finally, we explored how cosmopolitan identity is reflected in decisions about charitable giving (Study 5). Cosmopolites were more likely to contribute to overseas causes than local causes, but their pattern of charity was partially accounted for by a sense of exoticism they perceived in these foreign groups (rather than perceptions of need or pity). In sum, the present research empirically validates the often-theorized but rarely tested link between wealth and cosmopolitan identity, and elucidates the way in which charitable giving encourages forms of helping that reaffirm this elite identity.

Slavs and Snakes: Material Markers of Elite Identity in Viking Age Poland

This article offers a new perspective on a diverse corpus of high-status Western Slavic objects from the domain of the Piast dynasty in Poland, dated between the tenth and eleventh centuries ad. It is proposed that the lavish zoomorphic decorations, often depicting snakes, found on jewellery, weapons, and equestrian equipment reflected Western Slavic pre-Christian religious ideas and served as material markers of elite identity. The results of this study lead to a more nuanced understanding of Western Slavic worldviews and their material expressions, paving the way for new investigations into cultural interactions both within and beyond the Slavic homelands.

Anthropological elitology

This book deals with fundamental issues one of the main sections of elitology in charge of elitism of the subject of the elite strata. This paper analyzes elite kind of individual and social consciousness. It covers litologicheskogo aspects related to the theory of elite identity, culture, education and history. Designed a wide range of readers.

Scripting Politics

This chapter analyses the seventh characteristic of Roman political culture. The way that political institutions were functioning was based on the claim that they were central to society. Reality was different, and this produced ambiguities in the way elites positioned themselves. These can be analysed on the basis of the Ravenna papyri, which contain a number of reports of meetings of the city council of Ravenna and some other Italian cities. They show how a number of developments coalesced. First, the city council still formed a place to foster elite identity, but it did so in a society in which the traditional markers of elite identity were no longer adhered to by all, in which the church took over some of the social and economic roles, and in which some persons outside the council quite likely enjoyed a significantly higher level of wealth and status than the councillors themselves. Second, it shows what functions the remaining councils could perform, both at a practical and a symbolic level. By authenticating documents in accordance with the requirements of late-antique law, they performed an important practical notarial function. At a symbolic level, the elaborate procedures meant that social relations were enacted during the transactions. The council could assume—if only briefly—the central position in society that it still claimed. Third, it also shows the scripted quality of the proceedings. As the functions of the council and its role in society were reduced, role playing took over. Politics became literally scripted.

Elite Identity and Political Accountability: A Tale of Ten Islands

Emancipation of slaves in the 1830s transformed the political elites of the British Caribbean plantation islands. New elites were more accountable to the citizenry. We develop a theory in which two factors limit and possibly reverse the effect of this on political outcomes, with legislators: (i) ‘stepping up’ to pass extractive policies; and/or (ii) weakening democratic institutions. The theory is supported by an historical analysis of ten Caribbean plantation islands, based on original archival data on legislator race, occupation and roll-call voting. Eventually, all assemblies that experienced a significant change in composition dissolved themselves and converted to British ‘Crown Rule’.

Early Medieval Great Hall Complexes in England: Temporality and Site Biographies

This paper offers a critical reconsideration of the social, spatial and temporal dynamics of sixth- to eighth-century great hall complexes in England. The major interpretative issues and constraints imposed by the data are considered, and the sites are then subject to comparative analysis across long-term and short-term temporal scales. The former highlights persistence of antecedent activity and centrality, the latter the ways in which the built environment was perceived in the past, structured social action, and was a medium for the construction and consolidation of elite identity and authority. Within the broad similarity that defines the site-type there is evidence for considerable diversity and complexity of site history and afterlife.