Description
Leader Communities is a study of Stockholm's suburb Djursholm and other similar places all around the world: privileged communities where elites choose to live, socialize with other elites, and, most importantly, form families and raise their children into future elites. Sociologist Mikael Holmqvist argues that such communities consecrate inhabitants into leaders-that is, they offer their residents a social environment that imbues them with a sense of importance and authority. Leaders are made-not born-by the culture, history, traditions, ceremonies, rituals, and institutions of the place. Based on a comprehensive five-year ethnographic study, this book provides unparalleled insight into the character of today's power elite, and the moral, social, and political consequences of their aspirations to lead societies.
About the Author
Mikael Holmqvist is associate professor of sociology and professor of business administration at Stockholm University.
Reviews
One of the very few extensive and penetrating ethnographic studies of an upper-class community, its culture, lifestyle, mentality, ideals, and norms, but also its problems and shortcomings, which contributes new empirical knowledge to a topic which has received much attention in mass media as well as in elite literature. -- Trygve Gulbrandsen, research professor at the Institute for Social Research (Norway) Sweden is mainly known to Americans as an advanced welfare state with equality bordering on socialism. This book presents another side of Sweden through its focus on its most exclusive suburb, Djursholm, situated just outside of Stockholm. This is where Sweden's one-percenters live and also where they do their utmost to ensure that their children will stay in that percent. A first rate social science study. -- Richard Swedberg, Cornell University
Book Information
ISBN 9780231184274
Author Mikael Holmqvist
Format Paperback
Page Count 304
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press