‘Before long there will be nothing but billionaires!’ The power of elites over space on the Saint-Tropez peninsula

Is there a global super‐bourgeoisie?

“…The richest individuals and families of both the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie and the expatriate upper class nevertheless patronize many common places, often rely upon the same elite mobilities industry (Koh & Wissink, 2018) and share practices pertaining to multiresidentiality, consumption, and luxury travel that contribute to uniting the old and new bourgeoisies of the world. Examples of such secondary socialization include first‐class and business‐class flights (and, for the richest, flying on private jets and cruising on superyachts, see Budd, 2013 and Spence, 2017), stays in very high‐end hotels (Birtchnell & Caletrío, 2013), frequentation of the most exclusive restaurants, nightclubs (Mears, 2020), and sports clubs, as well as vacationing in places such as Saint‐Tropez and Ramatuelle (Bruno & Salle, 2018), St. Barts (Cousin & Chauvin, 2013), the Hamptons, Nantucket, Aspen, Gstaad, Portofino, Capri, the Costa Smeralda, or Marrakech. They also include premier cultural, commercial, or fundraising events such as the Cannes Film Festival (Ethis, 2001), the Art Basel exhibitions (Schultheis et al., 2015), the four main fashion weeks, the Met Gala, prestigious auctions, and private sales organized by luxury boutiques.…”

Getting Ahead in Singapore: How Neighborhoods, Gender, and Ethnicity Affect Enrollment into Elite Schools

“…In contrast to elite and nonelite junior colleges, which are well distributed across the island, elite and nonelite secondary schools are socioeconomically clustered: 81 percent of secondary schools in the wealthiest central neighborhood are elite compared to 15 percent in the moderately wealthy northeastern neighborhood and 10 percent in the least wealthy eastern neighborhood. A drive through the central Bukit Timah neighborhood reveals an “aristocratic parade” (Bruno and Salle 2018:446) of elite secondary schools standing majestically amid wide manicured green spaces, with riveting architecture and landscaping that reveals the “power of elites over space” (Bruno and Salle 2018:435). Many of these elite Bukit Timah schools are girls’ secondary schools: Elite girls’ secondary schools comprise 49 percent of all secondary schools in the wealthy central region, 5 percent in the moderately wealthy northeastern region, and 0 percent in the least wealthy eastern region.…”

Practices of Consumption: Cohesion and Distinction within a Globally Wealthy Group

“…Related to their movement between spaces, the super-rich have been shown to indulge in ‘super-luxury’ – purchasing jumbo jets, super-yachts and race cars (Featherstone, 2013). On the Saint-Tropez peninsula, conspicuous consumption among the globally wealthy has evolved into so-called ‘conspicuous seclusion’ (Bruno and Salle, 2018). It appears as if the transnational space is one in which consumption is highly visible – that this is, indeed, the practice of distinction among the transnational rich.…”

“…This article broadly contributes to the scholarship examining degrees of cohesion and distinction within the global elite at large, by studying the consumptive practices of a particular group of transnationally located, wealthy young people. The transnational space of study mirrors some of the other sites of investigation that recent scholars of elites have focused on: Saint-Tropez (Bruno and Salle, 2018), exclusive nightclubs (Mears, 2020) or upper-class neighbourhoods in São Paulo and Delhi (Paugam et al, 2017). In this article, we focus on the role of consumption, as it emerged as a significant part of everyday practices and of the ways members of the group we examined sought to position themselves.…”