In Good Company. Doing Exclusivity as a Mode of Reproducing Social Inequalities Using the Example of Service Clubs and Nobility Associations

• Applicant: Dr. Käthe Von Bose
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 451039170

To be ,in good company‘, to belong to a distinguished circle, and therefore not to be like everyone else: this desirable feeling of exclusivity is currently being produced in more and more areas of society. The project focuses on organizations that have been perceived as especially exclusive all along and where exclusivity is tied to status, privilege, and images of ,elitist‘ singularity: Service Clubs (such as Rotary) and Nobility Associations. In Service Clubs, membership is only achievable through invitation and is additionally based on career positions, in the case of Nobility Associations membership is based on a ,noble‘ background. Thus, they represent two mechanisms of reproducing social inequalities: accomplishments and success on the one hand, family background on the other hand.Thereby, the project focusses on contexts that so far have not been researched thoroughly, but are regarded as socio-politically influential. While these clubs and associations seem traditionalist and rather dated regarding their structures and goals, their appeal seems to be connected to the principle of exclusivity: the feeling to be chosen and to belong to an especially prestigious group. The project asks for the practices of belonging and the role exclusivity plays in them: Doing Exclusivity. With this term, the project develops a ,Grounded Theory‘ of a mode of reproducing social inequalities. It aims at examining how the Doing Exclusivity contributes to the production and preservation of social inequalities and especially the construction of ,elites‘ of society. Thereby, it focuses on how exclusivity is being stabilized by dimensions of social differentiation such as gender as well as social and national-cultural background. The importance of such dimensions is already apparent for instance in the division of women´s and men´s clubs and the traditional gender roles in Nobility Associations. Thus, the following research question will be pursued: Which explicit and implicit – affective, atmospheric – practices constitute the doing exclusivity of the clubs and associations? The study works ethnographically and entails guided interviews, participant observations as well as document analyses. It contributes to Affect and Gender Studies as well as intersectional Inequality Research, and fills a research gap in that it focusses on positions in society that are considered influential and ,elitist‘ or that regard themselves as such. By focusing on the Doing Exclusivity, it not only researches specific activities of the clubs and associations, but further examines mechanisms that socially as well as affectively generate imaginations of ,elites‘, of singularity and privileging and that stabilize social inequalities.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants