Leader Communities

Leader Communities is a study of Stockholm's suburb Djursholm and other similar places all around the world: privileged communities where elites choose to live, socialize with other elites, and, most importantly, form families and raise their children into future elites. Sociologist Mikael Holmqvist argues that such communities consecrate inhabitants into leaders—that is, they offer their residents a social environment that imbues them with a sense of importance and authority. Leaders are made—not born—by the culture, history, traditions, ceremonies, rituals, and institutions of the place. Based on a comprehensive five-year ethnographic study, this book provides unparalleled insight into the character of today's power elite, and the moral, social, and political consequences of their aspirations to lead societies.

Leader Communities is a study of Stockholm's suburb Djursholm and other similar places: privileged communities where elites choose to live, socialize with other elites, and raise their children into future elites. Mikael Holmqvist provides unparalleled insight into today's power elite and the social and political consequences of their aspirations.

Mikael Holmqvist is associate professor of sociology and professor of business administration at Stockholm University.

Trygve Gulbrandsen, research professor at the Institute for Social Research (Norway):
One of the very few extensive and penetrating ethnographic studies of an upper-class community, its culture, lifestyle, mentality, ideals, and norms, but also its problems and shortcomings, which contributes new empirical knowledge to a topic which has received much attention in mass media as well as in elite literature.

Richard Swedberg, Cornell University:
Sweden is mainly known to Americans as an advanced welfare state with equality bordering on socialism. This book presents another side of Sweden through its focus on its most exclusive suburb, Djursholm, situated just outside of Stockholm. This is where Sweden’s one-percenters live and also where they do their utmost to ensure that their children will stay in that percent. A first rate social science study.

Mitchell L. Stevens, Stanford University:
A signal accomplishment in the critical study of class and culture in the twenty-first century. Holmqvist deftly portrays how carefully the very rich attend to their own security and the intergenerational continuity of their privilege—even in one of the most admirably egalitarian societies of the modern era. Reading this book, I thought often of E. Digby Baltzell and C. Wright Mills.

Shamus Khan, Columbia University:
Leader Communities draws upon outstanding ethnographic research to open the door on a kind of community few ever see. Holmqvist’s insights are critical to understanding the social, moral, and political problems we face, and they suggest a pathway for addressing them. A must read for those interested in elites and inequality.