Product Description: In view of the drastically growing divide between rich and poor, people in many industrialized countries are asking about the responsibility of elites for society. Are the activities of elites determined primarily by their responsibility for the common good of the population or by their interest in enlarging their own power and wealth? This book pursues two aims in attempting to come up with an answer to this question...read more

Product Description: Louis Dumont's concept of hierarchy continues to inspire social scientists. Using it as their starting point, the contributors to this volume introduce both fresh empirical material and new theoretical considerations. On the basis of diverse ethnographic contexts in Oceania, Asia, and the Middle East they challenge some current conceptions of hierarchical formations and reassess former debates - of post-colonial and neo-colonial agendas, ideas of "democratization" and "globalization," and expanding market economies - both with regard to new theoretical issues and the new world situation...read more

Product Description: Louis Dumont's concept of hierarchy continues to inspire social scientists. Using it as their starting point, the contributors to this volume introduce both fresh empirical material and new theoretical considerations. On the basis of diverse ethnographic contexts in Oceania, Asia, and the Middle East they challenge some current conceptions of hierarchical formations and reassess former debates - of post-colonial and neo-colonial agendas, ideas of "democratization" and "globalization," and expanding market economies - both with regard to new theoretical issues and the new world situation...read more

The fact that London was parliamentarian rather than royalist was one of the principal reasons for the defeat of Charles I in the English Civil War. This book reinterprets London's role. It examines the relation of the municipality and of the City fathers as business magnates with both of the early Stuart kings and their parliaments, and explores the business connections of the City with the royal court, concluding that, far from being the natural allies of the king and court as is generally assumed, the City elite had mostly been seriously alienated from them by 1640. Professor Ashton offers an interpretation not only of the City's role in the years before 1640 but also of the reasons lying behind its support for parliament in 1642. It is both a contribution to the debate on the origins of the Civil War and a study in depth of the connection between big business and politics in early Stuart England.

An intriguing study of leadership in action focuses on nine real-life accounts of leaders who faced a moment of crisis and what they did to succeed or fail and includes the stories of Eugene Kranz and Apollo 13, Arlene Blum and the first women's expedition to the Himalayas, and others. Reprint. 17,500 first printing.

Product Description: Social scientists are concerned with élites of many kinds - bureaucracies, military oligarchies, political leaders and the like. The study of élites is frequently characterised by a certain suspicion, and the tone of the enquirer’s description and discussion of such groups is often sceptical if not actually hostile...read more

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