Power, Distinction, Display: Excavating Elites

Project Summary

This project explores Chicago’s elites from 1860 to 1940. Elites are those individuals who have disproportionate access to the most scarce and useful resources in society: wealth, political power, signs of cultural legitimacy, and valuable social ties. The history of capitalism is characterized by sharp and durable inequalities between social classes, but the structures of this inequality has taken distinctive shapes at different times and places. This project uses data about 25,421 individuals, based on extensively culled newspaper data, from three periods in Chicagos history (1860, 1900, and 1940) to visualize the changing shape of social networks in Chicago. 

Chicago Fellows Faculty

Rudi Batzell, Assistant Professor of History, Lake Forest College

This project would not have been possible without the support and collaboration of a team. My deepest thanks go out to all who have worked on this project and guided its development. 

The Digital Chicago Project Grant Team

Davis Schneidernman, thanks for your leadership and vision on this project. 

Emily Mace, thanks for coordinating and supporting our work and research. 

Anne Thomason, thanks for being the always helpful guru to help us figure things out. 

Jennifer Larsen, thanks for supporting all the amazing Chicago programming for this project and the College. 

Digital Designer

Madeeha Lamoreaux made possible the visualizations with her coding and digital design vision and skills. She has been a wonderful colleague and collaborator. 

Research Assistants and Richter Scholars 

Kent Beckman (Lake Forest College '20) spent many months on a heroic effort collecting the bulk of the underlying data for these networks. He also helped explore, code, and analyze the data. 

As Richter Scholars, Max Rowland (Lake Forest College '21) and Sarah Stauber (Lake Forest College '21) led the way in building the database for the 1860 network. Sarah helped develop a hugely helpful piece of code to help assemble the edgelists, saving us all many hours. Max continued to work on the project as a research assistant, and is helping to build a richer picture of the occupations, income, and history of network members. 

2018 Chicago Fellows 

My thanks to Annie Barry, Liz Benacka, Courtney Pierre Joseph, and Rand Smith for being amazing, curious, and supportive colleagues throughout.