Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Review Of Capital Without Borders: "Generic Social Processes And The Study Of Elites", Scott Grills

Brooke Harrington

Habitus And The Labor Of Representation Among Elite Professionals, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

Studying Elite Professionals In Transnational Settings, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

Fraud And Fantasy: Toward A New Research Agenda For Economic Sociology, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

Trusts And Financialization, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

Offshore-Paradiese Sind Unheimliche Orte, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

Under Anklage: De Rige Reagerer Med Vrede (Under Attack: The Rich React With Anger), Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

Social Structure, Power And Financial Fraud, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

Er Du Megarig, Behøver Du Ikke At Følge Loven, John Hansen

Brooke Harrington

Sådan Slipper De Ultra-Rige For Skat, Kreditorer Og Dyre Skilsmisser, Tor Johannesson

Brooke Harrington

Immersion Ethnography Of Elites, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

This chapter considers the practice of "immersion ethnography" in terms of its contributions to knowledge, as well as its demands and its history as a methodology within social science. Four recent books are examined as illustrations of the technique: Mears' (2011) "Pricing Beauty," Ho's (2009) "Liquidated," Khan's (2011) "Privilege," and Zaloom's (2006) "Out of the Pits."

Going Global: Professions And The Micro-Foundations Of Institutional Change, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

This study links theories of relationality and institutional change to deepen understanding of professionals’ role in globalization. In previous institutional research, it has been conventional to treat professionals as agents of firms or transnational organizations, and institutional change as the result of planned, strategic ‘professional projects’. By bringing a relational analysis to bear on the problem of institutional change, this study reasserts the theoretical significance of individual agency and everyday interactions between professionals and their clients, peers, and organizational environment. It also broadens the model of agency to include invention and improvisation by individual professionals, as a counterpart to collective …

The Companies We Keep: From Legitimacy To Reputation In Retail Investment, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

Few studies have examined public response to unethical or illegal behavior by firms, despite some research on institutional investors, organized protest groups or shareholder activists. Although a robust research literature shows that corporations invest heavily in impression management the relevant audiences for these messages have generally been construed by scholars as other organizations, obscuring the micro-foundations of market activity. This paper will address the knowledge gap by drawing on evidence from a long term field study of retail investors. Based on their responses to firms’ misconduct before and after the corporate fraud scandals of the twentieth century, this paper will …

Fun Fades At Investment Clubs--Wary Of Market Uncertainty, Interest Wanes In Get-Togethers; Stocks Are 'Scary', E.S. Browning

Brooke Harrington

No abstract provided.

States And Financial Crises, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

Most states act to protect the “safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people” against the depredations of financial crises in some or all of the following ways: regulation; provision of a safety net to protect individuals and key institutions from being irreparably damaged by crises; and, finally, punishment of those responsible in order to prevent crises in future. All three measures are intended to sustain public trust in financial systems. This is essential because, as former Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Alan Greenspan put it, “Trust is at the root of any economic system based on mutually beneficial exchange … If …

Scenes From A Power Struggle: The Rise Of Retail Investors In The Us Stock Market, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

This chapter examines the mass movement of Americans into investing during the 1990s as both a consequence and a cause of contested power between corporations and individuals. This movement was part of a larger historical pattern of economically marginalized people consolidating their power through associational strategies in the realm of finance. Using US investment clubs as a case study, the chapter draws on Foucault’s theories to illuminate the bilateral power structure of modern capitalism, in which market institutions and small groups at the grassroots level mutually influence one another. While the investment club movement was in part a response to …

Trust And Estate Planning: The Emergence Of A Profession And Its Contribution To Socioeconomic Inequality, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

This article offers a new perspective on the connection between socioeconomic inequality and occupations by examining the impact of trust and estate planners on global wealth stratification. While many studies treat the professions as mirrors of inequalities in their environments, this article looks at the ways professionals participate in the creation of stratification regimes. Trust and estate planners do this by sheltering their clients’ assets from taxation, thereby preserving private wealth for future generations. Using tools such as trusts, offshore banks, and shell corporations, these professionals keep a significant portion of the world’s private wealth beyond the reach of the …

The Sociology Of Financial Fraud, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

If there is an Urtext for the sociology of fraud, it is surely Herman Melville’s 1857 novel "The Confidence Man . This “parable of the market economy” (Mihm 2007:4) follows the title character over the course of a day (April Fool’s Day, of course) as he plies his trade on a steamboat cruising down the Mississippi River—his trade being the extraction of money from his fellow passengers on pretexts ranging from donations to loans. The confidence man succeeds, Melville writes, not just because of his skill, but because the boat (much like the market as conceived in economic theory) is …

From Trustees To Wealth Managers, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

This chapter will address the question: why did trusteeship become a profession in its own right after centuries as a voluntary undertaking? The question ties into the core themes of this volume because trustees are central actors in the intergenerational transmission of wealth, and, as a result, shape patterns of inequality (Harrington, 2012a). Trustees – now more often known as wealth managers– create and oversee the structures that allow families to remain wealthy over multiple generations.

Shame And Stock Market Losses: The Case Of Amateur Investors In The Us., Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

Losing money evokes a host of emotions, most of them painful. In his earliest work, Adam Smith wrote of the “embarrassment” and shame associated with financial losses, with bankruptcy being “the greatest and most humiliating calamity” of all (2010 [1776]: 149). More recently, the financial crisis of 2008 has been defined by shame, guilt, and anger, both at the individual and collective levels (Brasset and Clarke 2012). As United States Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson observed, “we have in many ways humiliated ourselves as a nation” (2008). These emotions may be particularly troubling for Americans, used to regarding their country as …

Responding To Deception: The Case Of Fraud In Financial Markets, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

The economic history of the 21st century reads like a litany of Biblical plagues: instead of locusts,frogs and boils, we have Enron, WorldCom and Tyco, followed by the options-backdating scandal, and now the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. It is perhaps even more disheartening to realize that American investors are still in much the same position as Emerson was over 150 years ago: dismayed to find themselves on the receiving end of deceptive corporate practices. BusinessWeek summed up this crisis in financial markets with the headline: “Can You Trust Anybody Anymore?”

Introduction: Beyond True And False, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

It seems fitting to follow Murray Gell-Mann’s Foreword with a story involving two other illustrious physicists. During the 1940s, Leó Szilárd—who discovered the nuclear chain reaction—decided to keep a diary of his work on the Manhattan Project. He told Hans Bethe, one of his colleagues on the project, that he didn’t intend to publish the diary, but only “to record the facts for the information of God.” “Don't you think God knows the facts?” Bethe asked. “Yes,” Szilárd responded, “He knows the facts, but He does not know this version of the facts.”

Trust And Estate Planning, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

This paper offers a fresh perspective on the connection between professional work and socio-economic inequality by tracing the emergence of the trust and estate planning profession in America. Unlike studies of inequality and the professions that focus on the status attainment of individuals and their families, or on labor market segregation, this paper explores professional work as a means of creating and reproducing larger systems of socio-economic stratification. Trust and estate planners contribute to macrolevel inequality by helping wealthy clients accumulate large fortunes and pass them on to their descendants; this, in turn, has shaped the status and composition of …

Thinking Aloud, Laurie Taylor

Brooke Harrington

No abstract provided.

Politics In The Public Sphere: The Power Of Tiny Publics In Classical Sociology, Gary Alan Fine, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington, Sandro Segre

Brooke Harrington

As Fine and Harrington [2004] have argued, the relationship between individuals and the social systems which they inhabit is shaped within face-to-face groups. Early work by Habermas and others on the development of the public sphere suggests that interactional arenas – salons, taverns, coffee houses, or other small group modalities – create arenas of discourse in which civil society is enacted and made concrete. However, this research has not led – as one might have expected – to the explicit theoretical attention by political sociologists to small groups and their political incarnation as “tiny publics.” In this article, we make …

Can Small Investors Survive Social Security Privatization?, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

It has become nearly axiomatic in this country to argue that everything would be better off if it were run like a business. In response, government has shifted its mission: if it used to operate like Super Glue, bonding Americans to one another, it is now working more like WD-40, minimizing friction in the pursuit of individual (and corporate) profit. Social Security is not only the largest government program, but the embodiment of the Super Glue approach to politics: the ultimate test case for privatization.

Where The Action Is: Small Groups And Contemporary Sociological Theory, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington, Gary Alan Fine

Brooke Harrington

Although small group research has been somewhat marginalized within sociology during the past decades, the authors argue that a focus on interaction arenas can contribute to a more complete analysis of social life. Specifically the authors examine three central domains of sociological analysis—culture, organizations, and the economy—to demonstrate how a focus on the mesolevel of analysis allows for a merging of macrosociology and microsociology. The authors draw on the perspective of sociological miniaturism to provide a model for cross-level research.

Tiny Publics: Small Groups And Civil Society, Gary Alan Fine, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

It has been conventional to conceptualize civic life through one of two core images: the citizen as lone individualist or the citizen as joiner. Drawing on analyses of the historical development of the public sphere, we propose an alternative analytical framework for civic engagement based on small group interaction. By embracing this micro-level approach, we contribute to the debate on civil society in three ways. By emphasizing local interaction contexts—the microfoundations of civil society—we treat small groups as a cause, context, and consequence of civic engagement. First, through framing and motivating, groups encourage individuals to participate in public discourse and …

The Social Psychology Of Access In Ethnographic Research, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

No abstract provided.

The Pervasive Effects Of Network Content, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

While network research has become increasingly important to our understanding of organizations, there is growing speculation that the current structural approach may misspecify the nature of network effects by ignoring variation in the content of relational ties (e.g., Podolny and Baron 1997). Network research to date has focused on the structural properties of networks—the overall patterns of connection—to the neglect of qualitative dimensions of relationships (Ibarra 1992). Several recent studies have explicitly called for new research dedicated to “delineating the critical role of tie content” in organizational networks (Gulati and Westphal 1999: 499). Studying tie content, according to these authors, …