This special issue of Cultural Politics uses the super-rich as a lens for exploring the impact of wealth and power on class mentalities, identities, and cultures. Contributors from a range of disciplines including sociology, economic geography, and cultural studies examine topics such as the media representations and lived experiences of the super-rich, the spatial distribution and concentration of wealth, and the discourses of (de)legitimization surrounding wealth. Throughout these essays, contributors identify the infrastructures that perpetuate and exacerbate inequalities—from politics and policy to financial devices and systems—and analyze emerging tensions within and between the categories of on/off-shore wealth, new/old money, and public/private spheres of wealth. The collection will influence the sociocultural study of elites and the study of the cultural and global repercussions of financialized capitalism.

Contributors. Jonathan Beaverstock, Roger Burrows, Aeron Davis, Sarah Hall,  Caroline Knowles, Jo Littler, Joanne Roberts, Elisabeth Schimpföss, Paula Serafini, Jennifer Smith Maguire

Jennifer Smith Maguire is Associate Professor in Cultural Production and Consumption at the University of Leicester and editor of Food Practices and Social Inequality: Looking at Food Practices and Taste across the Class Divide.

Paula Serafini is Research Associate at the CAMEo Research Institute for Cultural and Media Economies at the University of Leicester and author of Performance Action: The Politics of Art Activism.