The Metabolization of Privilege: Class-Crossing, Elite Defection and Post-Capitalist Philanthropy In Social Movements

Class analysis has traditionally focused on the social construction and reproduction of interests and positionality. Social movement research, meanwhile, has largely examined how collective action mobilizes resources and challenges dominant institutions. Less attention has been paid to how, and why, privileged individuals and groups engage in forms of collective action that contest, reconfigure, and sometimes mobilize privilege against itself, seeking to transform the very social structures from which they benefit.

This session proposes the concept of the metabolization of privilege to examine how economic, social, and political advantages are channeled into resources for transformative collective action and social innovation. Rather than viewing privilege solely as a mechanism of domination or reproduction, the session investigates the biographical, cultural, and institutional processes under which it may be reoriented toward supporting forms of collective action that challenge existing power relations.

The metabolization of privilege into collective action may gradate from movement allyship and reparative giving to class-crossing organizing, participatory grantmaking and commons funding. At the same time, it remains deeply contested, potentially fostering social transformation while also reproducing paternalism, dependency, and elite capture.

We welcome individual as well as comparative case study analyses exploring factors and processes underlying the metabolization of privilege, which include, among others:

• biographical trajectories, including formative and disruptive experiences;
• how social movements negotiate relationships with wealthy individual supporters and donor networks;
• how movements establish accountability, legitimacy, and democratic governance when significant resources originate from elites;
• how movements and privileged supporters co-construct post-capitalist notions and forms of assessment of value.