Elites in civil society: mapping the pattern of the Swedish elite’s civil society positions through social network analysis (1997-2007)

Elites engage in a variety of causes from philanthropy and charity to human rights and environmental protection. Building on Bourdieu’s vocabulary of capital, field, and habitus, this paper maps the civil society engagement of the Swedish elite 1997-2007 by using data from the two most recent editions of the Swedish Who’s Who (1997 and 2007). Using the Who’s Who as a proxy for the elite, the study applies Social Network Analysis and similar methods in order to show the composition and integration of the Swedish elite in civil society. The paper finds that the elite exhibits characteristic patterns: Organizationally, the elite is divided in two: A large cluster mainly integrated through political positions, and a smaller cluster integrated through organizations built on a Christian foundation. A Sequence Analysis reveals different career paths of the elite: While some built their position through civil society organizational capital, for others the affiliation to certain civil society organizations reads like a form of symbolic ‘consecration’.