York workshop on the research project Elites in an Egalitarian Society: Legitimizing forms of elite recruitment, reproduction and circulation

Concepts like power, class and elite are usually founded on an assumption that society, the positions an individual occupies herein and also the relations between individuals located in these positions, can be analysed as a multidimensional hierarchy. The correlative image of society is also a society that is divided into and structured by divisions between hierarchically ordered positions, between which people are more or less mobile, and where the elites are the ones located at the top of the relevant hierarchies. However, the hierarchies in the economy, polity, central administration, culture, research etc. may be constructed in different ways and draw upon different sources of legitimacy. Legitimate forms of elite recruitment, reproduction and circulation may thus vary both between sections of elite configurations, and between elite configurations. The seminar will discuss aspects of how such varieties may be conceived, understood and explained, relating to project publications, ongoing research and publication projects and plans, with a particular focus on Norwegian elite figurations.