Ideas Matter: ‘What’s wrong with the Professional Managerial Class?’

From the series ‘The elite: old and new’, theme of the boi
charity’s event The Academy, held online in November 2021.


The term ‘professional managerial class’ was coined in 1977.
Thinkers on both left and right have drawn attention to the rise
(and rise) of a seemingly new group in society who neither labour
in traditional occupations nor own significant amounts of
capital. This group of salaried professionals – in the civil
service, education, management, public relations, public health
etc. – not only increasingly manage the key institutions of
society. They are also said to exert a social and ideological
influence, promoting ‘progressive’ campaigns around gender,
sexual, racial, and other identity causes. But who are this
group? Can it really be said to be a ‘class’, and how do they
differ from more familiar elites?


Lecture by Catherine Liu, professor of film and media studies,
University of California Irvine, and the author of ‘Virtue
Hoarders: the case against the professional managerial class’


THE ACADEMY ONLINE IV: The elite: old and new To view the full
programme and some suggested background reading to the talks,
please visit  https://theboi.co.uk/academy-online-iv  


ASSOCIATED READING


For this lecture you may wish to read:-


READ: Barbara and John Ehrenreich, The Professional
Managerial Class in Radical America, Vol 11, No. 2, 1977 (pdf)
https://library.brown.edu/pdfs/1125403552886481.pdf

READ: Catherine Liu, Virtue Hoarders: the case against the
professional managerial class, 2021 https://amzn.to/3ehMCDS
  



 


THE ACADEMY In the context of today’s instrumental approaches to
knowledge, The Academy summer school is a modest attempt to
demonstrate the value of scholarship, and of the worth of the
university as a place of free enquiry dedicated to the pursuit of
truth.


 


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