Anxieties of Entitlement

Abstract

Despite the rise of the “moral economy” as a frame for analyzing increasing inequality, few scholars have explored the moral dimensions of elites’ experience and interpretations of their own privilege. Based on in-depth interviews with 50 affluent New York parents, this paper focuses on how they manage the peculiar concept of “entitlement”. In U.S. political culture, this concept links individuals’ dispositions and behaviors to whether they deserve resources, as studies of welfare recipients have established. I argue that a similar analysis is needed for elites. These privileged actors want to interpret themselves as legitimately deserving of (i.e., entitled to) their social advantages, which means not being “entitled” in a behavioral and dispositional sense. They cast legitimate entitlement as depending upon moral worth in three areas: hard work, reasonable consumption, and “giving back”. They also feel a strong obligation to raise children who share the­se values. In invoking these criteria of worth, affluent respondents primarily attach themselves to the symbolically-worthy American middle class. The paper concludes with a discussion of how this relationship between dispositions and distributions justifies inequality.