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Bourdieu's construct of the field of power has received relatively little attention despite its novelty and theoretical potential. This paper explores the meaning and implications of the construct, and integrates it into a wider conception of the formation and functioning of elites at the highest level in society. Drawing on an extensive dataset profiling the careers of members of the French business elite, it compares and contrasts those who enter the field of power with those who fail to qualify for membership, exploring why some succeed as hyper-agents while others do not. The alliance of social origin and educational attainment, class and meritocracy, emerges as particularly compelling. The field of power is shown to be relatively variegated and fluid, connecting agents from different life worlds. Methodologically, this paper connects biographical data of top French directors with the field of power in France in a novel way, while presenting an operationalization of Bourdieu's concept of the field of power as applied to the French elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores pathways to power from the perspective of the French corporate elite. It compares those who enter the ‘field of power’ with those who fail to reach this final tier. Adopting an innovative econometric approach, we develop and test three hypotheses. These underline the pivotal role of external networks and the strategic advantage of hyper-agency in maintaining power; and indicate that social origin remains a powerful driver in determining success. Birthright and meritocracy emerge as two competing institutional logics which influence life chances. Higher-status agents benefit from mutual recognition which enhances their likelihood of co-option to the extra-corporate networks that facilitate hyper-agency. The objectification of class-based differences conceals their arbitrary nature while institutionalizing the principles informing stratification. We re-connect class analysis with organizational theory, arguing that social origin exerts an enduring influence on selection dynamics which inform processes of hierarchical reproduction in the corporate elite and society at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Economic beliefs play a central role in the social construction of economic reality. It is necessary to include in the programme of a new economic sociology the active contribution of the main producers of economic beliefs, namely the economists. The role of economists in the reproduction of the social order can, to a certain extent, be described as the function of a central bank of economic beliefs. Economists are the producers of economic beliefs that are received, interpreted, used by various kinds of social actors in everyday life. In a situation of crisis like the one the French government faced in December 1995, it seems more and more obvious that they are becoming the ultimate reference, the lender of last resort for most contemporary social actors - economic leaders, technocrats, politicians, unionists, intellectuals, etc. To understand this particular position, one needs to consider economists as members of a specific social field, which has its own laws, regularities and structure. The social characteristics (especially the distribution of their kinds of capital, and the relative dispositions of economists) define their positions in this social space. It is then necessary to determine the relative autonomy of this field and its interdependence with other social spaces (for example, the field of enterprises, the bureaucratic, political and media fields, etc.). The main hypothesis developed here is the idea that the field of economists is less autonomous than it is usually thought to be, at least by many economists, and its structure is very similar to that of the field of power (and, among others, the opposition between economic and intellectual powers). In the general interdependence and homologies between social fields, the logic of the field of economists is a key contribution to the production of the symbolic economic order. The word 'science' applied to economics refers not only to an epistemological issue but also to the symbolic aspect of the order we refer to when we talk about economic reality, economic argument, economic constraints, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]