QUESTIONING the SUPER- RICH Representations, Structures, Experiences Paula Serafini and Jennifer Smith Maguire Abstract The authors outline how multiple dimensions — historical and contemporary; global and local; political, economic, social, and cultural — inform an understanding of the super- rich. Recent super- rich scholarship is reviewed with regard to three themes: discourses and representations; mechanisms and structures; experiences and identities. The empirical and conceptual insights of the contents are then highlighted, with regard to the significance of discourses of legitimacy, namely, those of meritocracy, civility, and luxury; the intersections of race and class that underpin assumptions about and representations of wealth; institutional and political- economic dynamics, in relation to international financial systems and property markets; and experiences and attitudes, examined via elites’ professional identities and cultural practices. The authors suggest that questioning the super- rich provides an avenue for the study of power in society, how it is reproduced, and how global hierarchies may be shifting. To that end, the articles attempt to make visible the brute force of the infrastructures (politics and policy, cultural and occupational conventions, financial devices and systems) that are occluded by the tendency to focus on the gloss of super- rich lifestyles; to draw attention to the long- term and newly emerging tensions within and between categories of wealth and of elites, and spheres of political, economic, and cultural activity; and to contribute to an understanding of how the accumulation of wealth is perpetuated and excused through discourses of legitimation, structural dynamics, and lived identities. These are much- needed critical interventions at a time of escalating inequality. Keywords discourse, elite, identity, representation, super- rich 1 Cultural Politics, Volume 15, Issue 1, © 2019 Duke University Press DOI: 10.1215/17432197-7289444 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/cultural-politics/article-pdf/15/1/1/670939/0150001.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 Paula Serafini and Jennifer Smith Maguire Guardian columnist (Cosslett 2018) with those inequalities locally and globally, A recently demanded, “Are we really and by the difficulties in gaining an “inside going to let the super- rich take all the art?” view” of the machinations and mind- sets, Warning readers about art consultants infrastructures, and ideologies at work buying Picassos in bulk and museum col- in the perpetuation of the super- rich. lections grinding to a halt as art becomes As such, attention tends to shift to the the best performing asset class of the surface: the ostentatiousness of super- rich year, the columnist contemplates a future individuals, their lifestyles, and their accou- “in which only the super- rich get to bask trements. In turn, what remains hidden in the beauty of humanity’s masterpieces” from view are the institutional, ideological, and notes, “I don’t especially begrudge and conventional bases on which rest the them their monopoly on vulgar yachts or reproduction of inequality. With this tacky hotels, but when they start stealing special issue, we suggest that social sci- the art, I’m liable to start rocking back ence has a particularly crucial role to play in and forth while muttering ‘Full commu- enhancing our capacity to grasp and, more nism!’ under my breath.” The piece makes so, to challenge the current situation, by manifest a range of recurrent anxieties and bringing to bear a diverse range of theoret- objections that characterize writings on the ical and methodological tools for under- super- rich, including the division between standing the contingent accomplishment, a mega wealthy elite and everybody else; reproduction, and legitimation of the power changes in global markets and structural relations that sustain and exacerbate the factors that enable extreme accumulations chasm between the super- rich and “the of wealth; fears around the loss of culture rest.” in the face of sheer economic might; and The global economy has been shaped the assumption that the super- rich are for more than five decades by the rise robbing “us,” the 99%, of our cultural of multinational corporations and global heritage. brands, escalating outsourcing and off- Questioning the super- rich — unpacking shoring, and the increasing withdrawal the legitimacy of the hyper concentration of of the state from the provision of a social wealth, unveiling the financial devices and safety net. In the past decade, a protracted systems that make it possible, and laying economic slowdown and austerity mea- bare its consequences and limitations — sures have been accompanied by acceler- could not come at a more timely moment. ating concentration of wealth in the hands As in the above example, there is a general of a few. The statistics on global inequality 15:1 March15:1 2019 sense of the deepening chasm between grow increasingly stark, as marked by • the very wealthy and “the rest,” expressed Oxfam in successive annual reports on and reproduced through their seeming global inequality, suitably timed to coincide monopolization of the good life (and good with the annual World Economic Forum POLITICS art). The super- rich appear increasingly meeting for global political and business isolated in a foreign land in which different leaders in Davos, Switzerland. A growing tax regimes and life expectancy outcomes popular awareness of and dissatisfaction apply. And yet, our capacity to grasp the with global and local inequalities have CULTURAL situation is inhibited, in part by the sheer shaped public views on wealth, luxury, 2 magnitude of the chasm, by the deeply and elites, and given rise to highly visible entrenched “wicked problems” bound up protest movements. And yet, wealth — and Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/cultural-politics/article-pdf/15/1/1/670939/0150001.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 QUESTIONING the SUPER- RICH the myth of wealth — continues to work meritocracy (Littler 2017), as in the case of in unintended ways. The cry of “we are the current president of the United States, the 99%,” as espoused by Occupy and who, despite being born into wealth, pres- other movements for distributive justice, ents himself as a self- made man (Serafini may fuel commitment to the redistribution 2017). These are poignant examples of of economic resources (Chomsky 2012; the complex structural and representa- Piketty 2014; Dorling 2014; Sayer 2015). tional dynamics of wealth: as the majority However, it also invigorates the reproduc- make material adjustments in an age of tion of structural inequalities, through the austerity, the super- rich modulate the defensive measures of the 1 percent, and symbolic language of their wealth. On the the aspirational strategies of those wishing other hand, ostentatious performances to join it. by the super- rich verge on the carniva- At the same time that the gap lesque: the current president of the United between the 1 percent and the 99 percent States (again) in his gold- plated elevator has widened, new groups are ascending (Littler, this issue); a Russian oligarch’s into the elite, from both established and £360 million super yacht (Burford 2017); a emerging economies. In 2016, 55 percent Chinese tycoon shopping with an entou- of the world’s 2,397 billionaires were rage of robot handmaidens (Mullin 2016). entirely “self- made”; 20 percent of those Such examples sit within a rich vein of billionaires were from China, Russia, India, popular accounts of the wealthy and their and Brazil (Wealth- X 2017). The makeup misbehaviors, from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s of the super- rich is rapidly changing as the Great Gatsby (1925) to Brett Easton Ellis’s leading economies of the global South American Psycho (1991) to Kevin Kwan’s increase their share of the market, shaking Crazy Rich Asians (2013). the foundations of the West’s domination So too do these examples sit within on economic but also cultural terms. This a long tradition of social scientific schol- has led to shifting divisions and alliances arship on the mentalities and practices of within and between the upper- middle economic elites, from Thorstein Veblen’s classes and ascendant ultra- affluent at ([1899] 1994) influential account of the both local and global scales. nouveaux riches of the 1890s, to more As the mechanisms for the creation recent work on the new global power and concentration of wealth transform, elite, conspicuous philanthrocapitalism, and global wealth becomes ever more and emerging modes of good taste (e.g., concentrated (Beaverstock, Hubbard, and Cassidy 2015; Daloz 2010; Hay and Muller Short 2004; Di Muzio 2015), the repre- 2013; Featherstone 2014; Schimpfössl sentational politics of status continue to 2014; Smith Maguire and Lim 2015). The shift (Faiers 2014) between positions of study of contemporary elites has emerged ambivalence. On the one hand, there are from a range of disciplinary perspectives demure performances of super- rich status. and in relation to an array of empirical foci; POLITICS Following the financial crisis of 2008, this has produced complementary if not newspapers reported on luxury goods always intersecting bodies of knowledge shoppers asking for plain shopping bags with regard to the lived experiences, dis- (Knowledge@Wharton 2009). Similarly, courses, and institutional infrastructure of CULTURAL we might look to the consecration of the super- rich (e.g., Freeland 2013; Sayer 3 privilege