Elites On Trial

Elites are 'on trial' firstly for their role in the past and shaping the context for the crisis, secondly in terms of how they responded to the crisis and finally in terms of what role they are playing in the aftermath. This book is concerned with what happens when elites are challenged by crisis and helps us understand 'elites on trial'.

A powerful and original argument that traces the roots of our present crisis of authority to an unlikely source: the meritocracy. Over the past decade, Americans watched in bafflement and rage as one institution after another – from Wall Street to Congress, the Catholic Church to corporate America, even Major League Baseball – imploded under the weight of corruption and incompetence. In the wake of the Fail Decade, Americans have historically low levels of trust in their institutions; the social contract between ordinary citizens and elites lies in tatters. How did we get here? With Twilight of the Elites, Christopher Hayes offers a radically novel answer. Since the 1960s, as the meritocracy elevated a more diverse group of men and women into power, they learned to embrace the accelerating inequality that had placed them near the very top. Their ascension heightened social distance and spawned a new American elite--one more prone to failure and corruption than any that came before it. Mixing deft political analysis, timely social commentary, and deep historical understanding, Twilight of the Elites describes how the society we have come to inhabit – utterly forgiving at the top and relentlessly punitive at the bottom – produces leaders who are out of touch with the people they have been trusted to govern. Hayes argues that the public's failure to trust the federal government, corporate America, and the media has led to a crisis of authority that threatens to engulf not just our politics but our day-to-day lives. Upending well-worn ideological and partisan categories, Hayes entirely reorients our perspective on our times. Twilight of the Elites is the defining work of social criticism for the post-bailout age.

In this bracing collection of provocative essays, the author examines the false benevolence that characterizes the power classes in contemporary America. While they tragically conceive their desire for authority as a form of virtue, the elite classes have set about remaking schools, rewriting the U.S. Constitution, dehumanizing charity, and making war on tradition in the name of a crude form of Social Darwinism.

Few social researchers study elites because elites, by their nature, are very difficult to access. The contributors to this volume provide valuable insights on how researchers can successfully penetrate elite settings. As the authors reflect on their experiences, they provide constructive advice as well as cautionary tales about how they learned to maneuver and become accepted in a world that is often closed to them. This book's coverage includes three broad research domains: business elites, professional elites, and community and political elites. Although the studies focus on qualitative methodology, even researchers who emphasize more quantitative methods will benefit from this volume's thoughtful observations on how researchers gather data, construct interview strategies, write about their subjects, and experience the research process. A wide range of researchers in organizational studies, sociology, political science, and many other fields will find this volume to be an important guide to the many subtle and elusive features of conducting successful research with these groups.

Douglas Board was hot-housed from an early age to be a member of the elite: the tiny coterie of people who run organizations, professions, interest groups, communities, and, at the highest level, countries. The training worked, and he has been chair of a household-name charity, treasurer of another, and deputy chair of a board-level consultancy. Elites are also his specialist subject: he has a doctorate in selection for senior roles and, as a head-hunter and executive coach, he has spent three decades recruiting and mentoring new members of the top tier. In this revelatory book &– part how-to guide, part detective story of ideas &– he analyses 10 traps which hold back those on the upper rungs of the ladder from making it to the top and undermine their self-esteem. He also asks whether that final push to the top is worth it. Writing passionately from his own experience, Board argues that success in the fullest sense isn't about winning the most glittering material prizes. For him, true fulfillment demands an adventure into the unknown inside ourselves: why do we seek what we seek? The answers can be surprising.

For fans of the Hunger Games, Divergent, and Shatter Me series comes an emotional, action-packed story of resilience, second chances, and fierce love.AN INESCAPABLE CITY. THREE DEADLY TRIALS. ONE WAY OUT.Lune Tatum, adopted daughter of the Supreme Elite, has lived within her father's walled city for eleven years.But she wants out. Except she can't leave, and not because of the clans and mutated beasts that roam beyond the impenetrable, electrified walls protecting her life. Her plan has always been to win the Elite Trials and earn Title of Choice--her only chance at freedom. And the only way to return home to her mother.Then a boy from her past arrives on her eighteenth birthday. His presence threatens Lune's carefully laid plans and exposes memories she's desperate to forget. He can't be trusted. Especially as he possesses dangerous secrets. And what he reveals could ruin the chance at freedom she's willing to die for.THE ELITE TRIALS trilogy is the thrilling adventure of Lune Tatum as she fights for freedom in a futuristic dystopian world plagued by danger, secrets, and betrayal.

Published in 1997, this text presents a specific interest in analyzing the role of the elites as a key factor for democratic rule and policy changes. In order to put the elites in perspective the author has also conducted opinion surveys asking some of the same questions among representative samples of the populations in the three countries. Comparing these three rather similar states gives possibilities for singling out conditions for specific national developments in elite structure and policies.

The Trial of Tempel Anneke examines documents from an early modern European witchcraft trial with the pedagogical goal of allowing students to interact directly with primary sources. A brief historiographical essay has been added, along with eleven civic records, including regulations about sorcery, Tempel Anneke's marital agreement, and court salaries, which provide an even clearer picture of life in seventeenth-century Europe. Maps of Harxbüttel and the Holy Roman Empire and lists of key players enable easy reference.