Colloquium Series: Caroline Knowles, Goldsmiths, London

The social impacts of extreme wealth are becoming matters of public and political,
as well as academic interest, as sociologists update ‘elite studies’. Savage and
Williams (2008) edited collection Remembering Elites explores the uber wealthy
sociologically, albeit condensed around a narrow range of concerns. While this
collection is grounded in empirical research, it misses what Knight Frank’s Global
Wealth Report (2014) observes. While asserting the significance of London as a
centre for expanding and parking global capital, the GW report notes that capital
lives in luxury apartments and houses in super-prime neighborhoods. And yet we
know little about how it does so. This talk, based on work in progress, explores one
of these neighborhoods using mobile methods. It asks how it is shaped by lived
articulations of plutocratic wealth. And, in teasing femininity out of the more
general category ‘plutocrat’, asks what kinds of lives wealthy women lead.