The Establishment
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"...the President act[s]...with the support and cooperation of key individuals and groups in the executive office, the federal bureaucracy, Congress, and the more important businesses, banks, law firms, foundations, and media, which constitute the private sector's "Establishment."--The Crisis of Democracy (1975) by Samuel Huntington “If the worker and his boss enjoy the same television program and visit the same resort places, if the typist is as attractively made up as the daughter of her employer, if the Negro owns a Cadillac, if they all read the same newspaper, then this assimilation indicates not the disappearance of classes, but the extent to which the needs and satisfactions that serve the preservation of the Establishment are shared by the underlying population.” -― One-Dimensional Man (1964) by Herbert Marcuse |
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The Establishment is a dominant group or élite that holds power or authority in a nation or in an organisation. It may comprise a closed social group which selects its own members, or specific entrenched élite structures, either in government or in specific institutions.
The American Sociological Association states that the term is often used by those protesting a small group that dominates a larger organisation. For example, in 1968, a group of academics formed the "Sociology Liberation Movement" (SLM) in order to repudiate the leadership of the American Sociological Association itself, which the SLM referred to as the "Establishment in American sociology".
In fact, one can refer to any relatively small class or group of people that can exercise control as The Establishment. Conversely, in the jargon of sociology, anyone who does not belong to The Establishment may be labelled an "outsider" (as opposed to an "insider").
Anti-authoritarian and anti-establishment ideologies tend to paint establishments as illegitimate.
See also
- Anti-establishment
- Cabal
- Cronyism
- Deep State
- Drain the swamp
- Established church
- Iron law of oligarchy
- Liberal elite
- New World Order
- Power to the people
- Ruling party
- The Man
