Description
Book SynopsisLeader Communities is a study of Stockholm's suburb Djursholm and other similar places: privileged communities where elites choose to live, socialize with other elites, and raise their children into future elites. Mikael Holmqvist provides unparalleled insight into today's power elite and the social and political consequences of their aspirations.
Trade ReviewOne of the very few extensive and penetrating ethnographic studies of an upper-class community, its culture, lifestyle, mentality, ideals, and norms, but also its problems and shortcomings, which contributes new empirical knowledge to a topic which has received much attention in mass media as well as in elite literature. -- Trygve Gulbrandsen, research professor at the Institute for Social Research (Norway) Sweden is mainly known to Americans as an advanced welfare state with equality bordering on socialism. This book presents another side of Sweden through its focus on its most exclusive suburb, Djursholm, situated just outside of Stockholm. This is where Sweden's one-percenters live and also where they do their utmost to ensure that their children will stay in that percent. A first rate social science study. -- Richard Swedberg, Cornell University
Table of ContentsPreface
1. A Shining City: The Emphasis on Aesthetics
2. A Privileged World: Economic Power and Wealth
3. Significant People and Winners
4. Sporty Teenagers, Winsome Pensioners
5. Fragrant, Sociable Personages
6. Community and Social Partition
7. Family Life
8. A Lifestyle Under Threat
9. Service Staff
10. Becoming an Elite
11. Judgment and Fear of Failure
12. Tactics for Success
13. The Rise of the “Consecracy”
Acknowledgments
Literature
Appendix: The Ethnographic Study
Notes
Index
