Being wealthy and feeling entitled

Specialising in social inequality and stratification in the United States, a topic she mostly investigates using ethnography, Rachel Sherman has studied, in her latest book, the lifestyle of affluent New-Yorkers richly endowed with income and wealth (bankers, corporate lawyers as well as people working in the arts and having inherited from their ascendants). In this interview with the coeditors of the special issue, R. Sherman unpacks the concept of entitlement, a staple of her enquiry that helps understand what it means to be rich for those situated on top of the social space. She highlights how hard work, reasonable consumption and giving back to society are integral to the way upper classes build and legitimate their feeling of entitlement to such power positions.