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This chapter examines why the firms that introduced a type of recorded jazz that was successful switched to champion another type of jazz that was less successful. Using both qualitative historical and quantitative analyses, the chapter explores record company comparative advantage in the context of sociological congruence. It also considers the relationship between jazz, race, and Victorian-era firms. In particular, the chapter considers a key source of jazz's illegitimacy with respect to cultural elites: its association with African Americans. It shows that incumbents, after releasing the earliest jazz recordings (in 1917–1918), reoriented the production of jazz music to align with their identities as producers of symphonic music amid mounting elite anti-jazz sentiments.

This chapter examines some distinctive characteristics of the forms of cultural authority prevailing in Spain during a period of neoliberal crisis. It first traces the genealogy of these forms of cultural authority, focusing on the ways in which big communications media, experts, politicians and intellectuals have presented the crisis. It then considers the tendency of agencies of cultural authority to promote a competitive, individualistic way of life that lies at the heart of neoliberalism. It also discusses the cultural elites' attempts to make the rest of the population adapt to the capitalist mode of production and distribution of value, a practice that occurred during the second phase of Francoism and enshrined through the technoscientific legitimacy of certain expert elites who claimed to be modernizing the country. The chapter concludes by assessing the impact of capitalist ‘modernization’ and technocracy on the traditional rural community-based peasantry.

This chapter examines the ‘standardizing’ operation carried out by the cultural authorities of the so-called ‘Cultura de la Transición’ (Transition Culture) in Spain. It first reviews the arguments regarding the nature of the situation experienced by everyone at the end of the dictatorship, and how this was used to justify some less than democratic ways of ushering in ‘democracy’. It then discusses the added authority gained by the political elites of the transition through their proximity to the cultural elites. It argues that most of the members of the cultural world opted for a depoliticized, individualist conception of aesthetic modernity. It also comments on the widespread commodification that transformed the world of culture into a ‘culture brand’ or ‘culture bubble’ model, which coexists with the intellectuals' ambitions to constitute an independent, critical authority confronting the established powers.

This chapter examines the evolution and development of the selection system for scholar-officials in ancient China. It also considers how the institution of selection has adjusted in response to the politico-social-cultural conditions of different periods and how it embodies political rationalization. The chapter first explains why ancient China's politico-cultural elites differed in practice from the elite politicians of ancient city-states in the West or modern Western nation-states before discussing how the social consensus for historical China's meritocracy formed. It then explores the problem of creating ancient China's meritocracy, focusing specifically on how, in a large state, an elite can be selected in an institutional way that is fair, accurate, and effective. The chapter goes on to describe the recommendation and examination systems for scholar-officials and concludes with an analysis of the politics of meritocracy as well as the politics beyond meritocracy.

This chapter draws on newspaper publications, radio and television broadcasts, and legal documents. It explores local heritage politics during the economic and cultural liberalization of the Yeltsin years. Public debates at this time reveal a bitter struggle for control over heritage between local cultural elites and new actors of influence in post-Soviet society, from clergymen to supermarket barons. The partial privatization of the heritage economy, which resulted in the commodification of many historic buildings as sites of elite entertainment and recreation, struck a particularly dissonant chord with local preservationists. The criticisms advanced by these lobbies with regard to developments in the heritage sphere reveal a profound sense of displacement and disillusion with the conditions of postsocialist life.

This chapter constructs the barber's social worlds and intellectual itinerary. It follows Ibn Budayr in Damascus to show his mobility from the impoverished outskirts of the city to the culturally and materially affluent center of intramural Damascus, where he set up shop and serviced the learned elites. Ibn Budayr's education is thus understood as a form of “learned illiteracy” (fuqahā’ umiyyūn)—learning acquired by artisans who regularly attended classes held near the bazaar. Emboldened by an improved social status, Ibn Budayr wrote a scholarly chronicle in the manner of his learned customers. In his chronicle, he uses the literary form of the tarjama (obituary notice), typically written by scholars about deceased scholars. In writing obituaries of the cultural elite, the barber manages to ensconce himself in their midst. The chapter shows how Ibn Budayr utilized his book-writing endeavor as both proof of social arrival and means to accumulate prestige.

Chapter 3 examines the legacy of the May Fourth Movement in the context of postwar Hong Kong’s golden age of cinema. It argues that the May Fourth project was an unfinished one and was carried forward by progressive Cantonese filmmakers who were the torchbearers of its ideology. This chapter focuses on the careers of left-leaning filmmakers such as Ng Cho-fan, one of the founders of the Union Film Enterprise Ltd., and their emergence as postwar Hong Kong’s new cultural elites. Through a close reading of Union’s film adaptations of the Ba Jin trilogy, Family (Jia, dir. Ng Wu, 1953), Spring (Chun, dir. Lee Sun-fung, 1953), and Autumn (Qiu, dir. Chun Kim, 1954), this chapter demonstrates the transformative nature of the moral message of postwar Hong Kong’s cultural elites. Not only did left-leaning film talent repurpose core tenets of May Fourth, they also sought to reinterpret the spirit of vernacular modernism for the colony’s audiences through their film productions. Although May Fourth precepts were brought to Hong Kong by China’s nanlai cultural elites and leftwing film talents, the May Fourth spirit underwent a creative translingual appropriation during the 1950s as local Hong Kong leftwing companies such as the Union and Xinlian emerged.

This chapter focuses on Warsaw's wartime culture wars. Before the war, Warsaw was a busy metropolis, a city in a hurry with coach traffic comparable to that of the largest of European urban centers, proud of its high culture dominated by the classical performing arts and boasting a lively nightlife revolving around its many cafes and restaurants. This Warsaw was assaulted almost immediately by the exigencies of war, as disruptions of public transportation, the imposition of curfews, and a ban on alcohol sales undermined the efforts of the city's cultural elites to maintain “business as usual.” At the same time, the exacerbation of existing social, ethnic, and gender tensions found expression in the public discourse on culture and propriety during wartime, reflected in heated debates about horseracing and legalized gambling, temperance and prohibition, the emerging new venues of cinema and cabaret, and radical changes in fashion.

This chapter assesses the extraordinary rewards that simultaneously reflected a composer's authority with elite audiences and, by conferring official prestige, molded that authority and shaped the audience's tastes. Honorary titles and Stalin Prizes made and marked the pinnacle of the Soviet cultural elite. Taken together, professional authority, prestige, official status, and unofficial recognition constituted composers' intellectual or creative authority, both individually and as an elite group in Stalinist society. Though diverse audiences granted the authority required to qualify for these extraordinary awards, the criteria by which they were granted were essentially determined by the professional elite, especially members of the Stalin Prize Committee. This committee formed a crucial interface between the Stalinist political leadership and the creative intelligentsia. Ultimately, the musical elite's agency to interpret musical value was used to translate creative authority into social hierarchies and material privilege.

This chapter describes some of the rhetoric and symbolism surrounding the Boomer-blaming phenomenon. The first is the attempt to highlight the apparently divergent fortunes of different age groups. The next strategy is to upset and offend the younger generation, primarily reflected through sensationalist headlines highlighting the supposed ‘greed’ of their elders. The final rhetoric stems from self-absorbed ‘Millennial angst’ griping about the unfairness of their circumstances. Taken together, the chapter argues, these methods of Boomer-blaming cast the difficulties of the present moment in generational terms. They pretend to be authentic expressions of young people's pain and wisdom, but in reality these sentiments are scripted by political and cultural elites.

This chapter investigates the criticism of astrology and the occult arts in elite medieval venues—in particular, the university and the royal court. Critics of the occult arts have long railed against the purported credulity of simple people, arguing that they were easily duped or frightened by powerful and hidden knowledge. When this body of knowledge was applied to an environment rife with apocalyptic expectation, authorities argued that apprehension could easily turn to panic among the ignorant. The implication of such anti-occult rhetoric is that members of the intellectual, cultural, and secular elite should eschew disciplines like astrology or alchemy, lest they be perceived as juvenile, simple, or womanly, and thus undermine their own authority.

This chapter offers a reading of Thomas Frank’s book What’s the Matter with Kansas? in relation to the mainstream left’s desperate wish that the culture wars would disappear. What’s the Matter with Kansas? paints a depressing and infuriating picture of what globalization, which is to say transnational corporate suburbanism, has done to Kansas and—by extension—to America. It attacks with ferocity and eloquence the stereotyping of authentic heartlanders vs. latte liberals from which lightweights like David Brooks have fashioned careers. But the book also makes a compelling and unassailable observation: that a large chunk of the working class has displaced its anger at class oppression from the corporations and allied politicians who actually rule us to the cosmopolitan, secular “cultural elite,” whose offenses range from rejection of conservative sexual morality to epicurean habits of consumption. So long as these class wires remain crossed, changing the direction of American politics is not possible.

This chapter explores the multidimensional relationship between exceptional sites and the contexts in which they function by focusing on the emergence of the so-called Shanghai buddhascape of the 1920s and 1930s and its influence on the contemporary urban fabric. It describes Shanghai as a privileged site for understanding Buddhist-inspired self-fashioning and, more generally, the spatial tactics of Buddhist practitioners in the context of colonial modernity as well as global capitalism. It also considers the sensitivities of the urban cultural elite toward Buddhism and its presence in China's modern cityscapes. It argues that ordinary Shanghai urbanites find solace and purpose in Buddhist technologies of salvation.

This chapter evaluates the effect of printing on the Ashkenazi cultural élite. The shift from script to print in the sixteenth century heralded a reshaping of Ashkenazi literary models. The chapter traces some reactions amongst Ashkenazi intellectuals to this shift, which are indicative of their general attitude to the structural changes in patterns of the transmission of knowledge during the period. It focuses on certain developments within intellectual circles, primarily in connection with changes in the way halakhic literature — the core of the Ashkenazi literary canon — was written and transmitted. While the impact of the making of books and printing has long been a central issue in the history of European culture in general, it is genuinely surprising that Jewish culture, which is so profoundly literary, has not been examined in this light up to now.

Having achieved fame as America’s foremost purveyor of low culture, Levine began dealing in arthouse cinema at a national level—a field of endeavor that many felt he was unsuited for. This chapter focuses on Levine’s packaging of arthouse cinema for American audiences in the early 1960s and on the criticisms occasioned by critics and commentators, who accused Levine of being an interloper and dilettante. The chapter shows how, with the questioning of the concept of “high culture” at this time, cultural gatekeepers and elites sought to fortify their positions and to exert an even greater authority over movie culture. Levine was an ideal target for critics such as Dwight Macdonald and Bosley Crowther, but this chapter argues that their criticisms actually worked in Levine’s favor by portraying him as the maverick outsider that he portrayed himself to be. The chapter also investigates accusations that Levine was seeking critical redemption and an improved public image through his dealings in art cinema—accusations that were never true but were directed at him for the remainder of his career.

This chapter examines Vladimir Lenin's connection with the Jews. It explains that Lenin's parents belonged to the well-educated Russian cultural elite and speak of someone's ethnic origin in the Ulianovs' milieu was the height of bad taste. It also mentions that both the Blanks and Ulianovs were Russian Christians, lived in Russian towns on the Volga River, and spoke Russian. This chapter considers Lenin's attitudes towards the Jews, how he treated his colleagues of Jewish origin, and what being Jew meant to him.

This chapter provides an overview of Levine’s life and career and introduces the concepts used throughout the book: showmanship, exploitation, and production. The chapter places Levine’s career in context by positioning him in terms of his antecedents, influences, and those he influenced. The reader is introduced to Levine’s versatility and the hustling nature of his approach to business and argues that Levine’s distinction as a promoter and producer lay in the fact that he appeared to be unfettered by many of the cultural demarcations (high/low culture, art house/exploitation) that constrained so many of his contemporaries and critics.

With the success of Hercules, Levine was often the subject of articles and profiles in the popular press. In addition to being profiled in publications such as Time, Life, and Esquire, he was lampooned as “Joe LeVenal” in the satirical Mad magazine. This chapter concentrates on Levine’s emergence as a public figure of note and the self-promotional tactics he used to achieve what was an unprecedented amount of fame for a film importer and promoter. The chapter also shows how Levine capitalized on the criticism he was subjected to in order to position himself in opposition to America’s cultural elites and how he was able to take advantage of being a divisive figure to keep his name in the press.