Reproducing Elites and Notable Families In Non-European Modernities

Processes of modernization have reshaped the mechanisms through which status, power, and privilege are reproduced across generations. Yet across many non-European societies, elite and notable families have persisted, disappeared, and re-emerged in new forms through changing institutional arrangements.

Studies of modernization have often treated such trajectories as legacies of premodern social structures or as evidence of incomplete modernization. This session takes a different perspective. Rather than viewing elite reproduction as a remnant of the past, we ask how it has been reconstituted, transformed, and embedded within modern institutions and social structures. Rather than treating non-European societies as variations of a European model, the session approaches them as important sites for understanding the historical formation and reproduction of modernity itself.

We welcome historical, comparative, and theoretically informed empirical studies on the reproduction of political, economic, professional, educational, religious, and local elites, including local notables, influential families, and other locally embedded power holders. Contributions may examine family strategies, inheritance, marriage, education, social networks, organizations, and other mechanisms of reproduction. By bringing together diverse regional perspectives, the session aims to explore how elite and notable family reproduction contributes not only to the persistence of social hierarchies but also to the reorganization of social order under conditions of rapid social change.