SOCI 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: The Power Elite, Elite, Grater

• School: UBC
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOCI 102
• Professor: Catherine Corrigall- Brown

Document Summary

The powers of ordinary men are circumscribed by the everyday worlds in which they live, yet even in these rounds of job, family and neighborhood they often seem driven by forces they can neither understand nor govern. Immediately below the elite are the professional politicians of the middle levels of power. Mingling with them are the professional celebrities. Both views must be taken into account but neither is adequate. The way to understand the power of the elite lies neither solely in recognizing the historic scale of events nor in accepting the personal awareness reported by men of apparent decision. As each of these domains become enlarged and centralized, the consequences of its activities become grater and its traffic with others increases. They are all interrelated bc the decisions made within the political domain determine economic activities and military programs. If there is government intervention in the corporate economy, so there corporate intervention in the governmental process.