[EDLING:573] Re: Elite as ignorant and self-serving

[Tamara Warhol]

I recently forwarded some discussion from the language policy list-serve to a
friend who is a PhD candidate in history to comment.  He sent back the following
reply:

"I am intrigued that the elite should be described as ignorant and self-serving,
but the masses are outward-looking and intelligent.  The writer is reacting
against this oversimplified characterisation, of course, but I wonder how
prevalent a modified view of this is.  In my own work, I unashamedly focus on
the elites--the educated, the wealthy, people I consider outward-looking because
they have better than a hand-to-mouth existence.  I igonore the illiterate
peasants in the first place because, unless an elite writes about them, there
isn't sufficient evidence to say much.  In the second place, they didn't matter
in their own time.  Why should they matter to us? (I admit, I am mostly
interested in studying the exercise of power.)"

While some of his comments are tongue-in-cheek, I am interested in his
observation about how we characterize elites and the masses.  Additionally, I
wonder where we locate ourselves within this dichotomy.

-Tamara

--
Tamara Warhol
PhD Student
Graduate School of Education
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA
warholt at dolphin.upenn.edu