ABSTRACT

This chapter brings out the national diversity of the fortunes of the very wealthy, focusing on the European nations. It pursues the issue of the "structured heterogeneity" of elites still further by focusing on the temporality of elites. The chapter draws out how the historicity of elite accumulation allows recognizing the singularity of the current elite "moment". It draws attention to the way that differing forms of capital – economic, cultural and social – vary in the ways that they can be accumulated in absolute terms, and that the remarkable accumulation of economic capital plays a fundamental role in shaping the elite constellations. The chapter shows how the sociological study of elites is rising to prominence again. It reflects conceptually on pushing beyond economistic conceptions of elites to reflect further on the "groupness" of elites. The concept of social class has been fundamental to sociological analyses of inequality.