Elites, Race and Nationhood

This book provides an ethnographic investigation of the white, upper-middle classes in Britain. It follows the Jack Wills brand to demonstrate how the internal economies of the brand forge a distinctive, elite social network made up of former public-school and Russell Group university students.

Autorentext

Daniel R. Smith is Lecturer in Sociology at Anglia Ruskin University, UK. He has published widely on social class, whiteness and popular culture.

Klappentext

Elites, Race and Nationhood explores the lifestyles of the young, affluent and majorly white upper-middle classes in Britain. By investigating the brand Jack Wills and its corporate activities, Smith unfolds a sociological story of how and why this brand and its lifestyle come to figure so centrally in the lives of these privileged young men and women. The book tells the story of a purported extinct social class- a gentry- and shows that they are 'back' and branded.

A contribution to the sociological study of elites, race and national identity, this book ethnographically explores the life-world and practices of a seldom studied 'class' in British sociology, the upper-middle or professional middle classes, describing their practices, orientations to popular culture and contemporary neo-liberal consumer capitalism.

Inhalt

1. Branded Gentry
2. The Gentry Aesthetic
3. The Dialectic of Jack Wills
4. Patronage and its Conflicts
5. Convivial Privilege and Exclusion
6. Ambivalent Aspiration
7. Conclusion: Embedded Economies and Distributive Justice in Arcadia