The social field of the European corporate elite: a network analysis of interlocking directorates among Europe's largest corporate boards

In this article I investigate the emerging patterns of the European corporate elite network as an example of a European social field, as described by Fligstein. The findings confirm that interlocking directorates form a European corporate network. However, the intercorporate network rests on a very small group of European corporate elite members: it remains the playground of a select few pan‐European ‘big linkers’. Although financial institutions and bankers appear in the upper echelons of the network, they do not occupy crucial positions. Rather, (former) CEOs of Europe's largest big non‐financial businesses knit together the network of interlocking directorates. The network rests on a coalescence of finance and industry, rather than on the dominance of the one over the other. Although the project of European unification has been quite successful in organizing the formal institutional structures, it has not yet led to reproduction of a European business community reminiscent of the national communities.     

Is the locus of class development of the transnational capitalist class situated within nation‐states or in the emergent transnational space?

The rise of the modern corporation has disrupted the class structures of nation‐states because, in the era of globalization, such reorganization now occurs across borders. Yet, has globalization been deep enough to facilitate the emergence of a transnational capitalist class (TCC) in which both class formation and consolidation processes are located in the transnational space itself? I contribute to our understanding of the TCC by contrasting the personal characteristics, life histories and capital endowments of members of the British corporate elite with and without transnational board appointments. The existence of the honours system in the UK allows us to compare individuals objectively in terms of their symbolic capital and to link this trait to embeddedness in the TCC. By studying 448 directors from the 100 largest firms in the UK in 2011, I find evidence of a TCC with a class consolidation process that is located within transnational space, but whose class formation dynamics are still tethered to national processes of elite production and reproduction.     

'Europe' within and without Narratives of American cultural belonging in and through My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)

Abstract

This article examines My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), a Hollywood romantic comedy in which Greek-Americanness features for the first time. Three tropes are debated that are linked to American social and national self-narration: the first is concerned with the assertion of Greek difference within American identity. The second examines the WASP cultural norm which is simultaneously valorized and contested. The third trope, which comprises a strategy of idealization of American identity, purifies American self-narration of its contestable aspects and represses cultural insecurities. The article draws mainly on American responses to the film, in order to understand how cinematic narratives are debated by the audience. It will be argued that the film reproduces a dilemma central to American cultural self-narration. This dilemma is concerned with American self-recognition as 'pure', European, ethnic and multiform, all at the same time.     

Evidence of a transnational capitalist class‐for‐itself: the determinants of PAC activity among foreign firms in the Global Fortune 500, 2000–2006

Transnational capitalist class (TCC) theory is rooted in the claim that the globalization of the economy has led to a globalization of economic interests and of class formation. However, systematic evidence linking the indicators of transnational class formation with political behaviour is largely missing. In this article, I combine data on board of director interlocks among the 500 largest business firms in the world between 2000 and 2006 with data on the political donations to US elections of foreign corporations via the corporate political action committees (PACs) of their subsidiaries, divisions or affiliates. Controlling for the various interests of individual firms, I find that foreign firms that are highly central in the transnational intercorporate network contribute more money to US elections than do the less central foreign firms. Given prior research on board of director interlocks, this finding suggests that a segment of the transnational business community has emerged as a class‐for‐itself.     

Poverty,gender and literary criticism Reassessing Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth

Abstract

Attention to the neglected theme of poverty in The House of Mirth offers a perspective on Edith Wharton that contravenes the leisure-class ethos in which critics tend to place her. Wharton's novel refigures a turn-of-the-century sociological discourse of poverty and dependence to undermine the absolute class ideologies pervading contemporary philanthropic writing about poor and working women. By defining poverty as a psychological condition that can operate across traditional class boundaries, Wharton develops a dynamic sense of gender consciousness founded not in cultural abstractions but in socioeconomic conditions that trap women between financial dependence on men and the impoverished alternative of the world of work.     

A middle‐class global mobility? The working lives of Indian men in a west London hotel

In this article we examine the working lives of young, single, middle‐class Indian men employed in the increasingly global hospitality sector in London, UK. Using a case study of a single hotel, we investigate a particular form of Indian middle‐class global mobility that differs from both the well‐documented ‘low status’, unskilled migrant as well as the highly‐skilled, science oriented migrants. We explore how their jobs both reinforce and challenge middle‐class Indian notions of masculinity, as well as how the recruitment process is both gendered and economically selective. We suggest that the transnational formation of Indian middle‐class identity is drawn from four main categories: a middle‐class lifestyle in India, class‐based motivations, the gendered and class based recruitment process of the UK hospitality industry, and the performance of class‐based gender identities.     

Transnational class formation and spatialities of power: the case of elite competition in Bolivia

In this article, I argue that the neoliberal and counter‐neoliberal transitions in Bolivia secured the power of transnational capital within the country. In the 1980s and 1990s, Bolivia's mining elite used neoliberal strategies to undermine the interests of the country's agricultural elite and pursued a marriage of convenience with transnational capital that allowed both to enter state‐monopolized spaces of investment in mutually beneficial ways. In Bolivia's counter‐neoliberal turn, leftist social movements and political parties removed the elite from power but were dependent on transnational firms to help them use the country's natural resource wealth to fund programmes of socioeconomic change. Engaging theories of the transnational class formation, I assert that scholars need to acknowledge how different capitalist class fractions have distinct spatialities of power. In particular, it is necessary to distinguish between global elites that participate in local circuits of accumulation and local elites that participate in global circuits of accumulation.     

The global corporate elite after the financial crisis: evidence from the transnational network of interlocking directorates

What impact did the recent financial crisis have on the corporate elite's international network? Has corporate governance taken on an essentially national structure or have transnational networks remained robust? We investigate this issue by comparing the networks of interlocking directorates among the 176 largest corporations in the world economy in 1976, 1996, 2006 and 2013. We find that corporate elites have not retrenched into their national business communities: the transnational network increased in relative importance and remained largely intact during the crisis lasting from 2006 to 2013. However, this network does not depend – as it used to do – on a small number of big linkers but on a growing number of single linkers. The network has become less hierarchical. As a group, the corporate elite has become more transnational in character. We see this as indicative of a recomposition of the corporate elite from a national to a transnational orientation.     

New insights in reproducing transnational corporate elites: the labour market intermediation of executive search in the pursuit of global talent in Singapore

In this article, I provide new theoretical and empirical insights into the reproduction of transnational corporate elites through the process of people moving between firms’ internal labour markets rather than from expatriation. Theoretically, the article advances understandings of the reproduction of transnational corporate elites by drawing on a pioneering engagement with global talent, transnational elites and labour market intermediary discourses. I generate these new theoretical insights through an original case study of how global executive search firms in Singapore create pipelines for the recruitment of transnational corporate elites between firms’ internal labour markets. The findings also highlight the vital role of Singapore's neoliberal labour market practices, as well as its foreign talent programme to ‘win the war for talent'. By situating this research on the agency of executive search in reproducing Singapore's transnational corporate elite, the article's key contribution is to decentre North American and Western perspectives on the reproduction of knowledge on transnational corporate elites.     

人类发展生态学视域下师幼互动的有效策略

师幼互动是儿童学业和社会发展的重要预测因素,是“孩子们在教室里学习的主要机制”。人类发展生态学视域下师幼互动呈现师幼角色转变、师幼关系平等、互动贯穿全程及互动环境和谐等特征。笔者以CLASS为研究工具,以长春市3所民办幼儿园为研究对象,发现目前师幼互动中存在幼儿主体性地位缺失、师幼互动背景不平衡、环境不和谐等问题,并从人类发展生态学角度提出师幼互动的有效策略以指导师幼互动的实践。