Maren Toft
Biographic Data
| ID | 258732 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maren Toft |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maren |
| FAMILY NAME | Toft |
| SIGNATURE | TOFT M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oslo |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1415-3062 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 252 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Varieties of Economic Elites? Preliminary Results From the World Elite Database (WED)
The strategies, decisions and beliefs of those who occupy prominent positions of economic power have influence on very large corporations and the markets they dominate, on vast amounts of economic resources, and on the rules of the game. However, the sociology of elites faces a dual challenge: divergent conceptualisations of what can be considered as a position of economic power and internationally incompatible sources of information hinder compa…
Wealth and Class Analysis
Wealth inequalities are increasingly prominent in contemporary societies but they have not been systematically addressed by sociological class analysis. However, class analysis should have a lot to offer: in the literature on wealth inequality, wealth is often approached as a unidimensional distribution - a quantity one can possess more or less of, crystallized in notions of the Top 1%. In this theoretical intervention, we discuss ways in which c…
Nation‐builders and market architects
This paper examines the types of work that jurists have historically undertaken and maps how opportunities for legal practice have been shaped by social origins across three centuries: after constitutional independence in the mid‐1800s, during industrial capitalism in the mid‐1900s, and at present‐day advanced capitalism. I analyze historical archive data on law graduates from the 19th and 20th centuries in combination with administrative registr…
Quantifying class trajectories
In this article, I discuss the potential for quantitatively accounting of the social world as relationally constituted in both a topological and a temporal sense. As statistical procedures rest on underlying assumptions of the social world, I emphasise how multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) thinks relationally, as Bourdieu famously proclaimed, but to a lesser extent addresses the temporal pattering of social life. I point to the beneficial pr…
Dynastic cores and the borrowed time of newcomers. Wealth accumulation and the Norwegian one percent
This paper explores the trajectories of Norwegians who, in their late-thirties, possessed financial assets, such as securities, company shares and stocks, qualifying them as the wealthiest one percent nationally. We describe the accumulation of financial wealth over a 25-year period in adulthood and study how different wealth sequences are linked to family origins and kinship ties. Although some Norwegians manage to build up large fortunes from r…
Wealth Accumulation and Opportunity Hoarding
Although the Scandinavian countries are often considered to epitomize social democratic governance, Scandinavia's profound wealth inequalities, seen in relation to the more modest income differences, constitutes a fascinating paradox. Drawing on class theoretical concerns with strategies for reproduction and a Bourdieusian emphasis on class fractions, we explore how class-origin wealth gaps evolved over the past 25 years in Norway, and how they c…
Family Wealth and the Class Ceiling
In this article we demonstrate that those from working-class backgrounds face a powerful 'class ceiling' in elite occupations. Examining how class origin shapes economic returns in the Norwegian upper class (3.8% of the population), we first find that the income advantage enjoyed by those from privileged backgrounds increases sharply as they ascend the income distribution in both elite business and cultural fields. Second, we show that those from…
Upper-class romance
This article focuses on social closure by way of marital homogamy within the upper class. It offers new insights into the social structuring of romantic partnerships, while drawing on research on assortative mating and contemporary elite and class analysis. The analysis is based on detailed data covering the entire Norwegian population. Our main point of focus is the upper class, whose patterns of partner choice have been little studied. By drawi…
Mobility closure in the upper class
Most understandings of the ways classes become social groupings centre on processes of mobility closure whereby mutual appreciation and recognition within classes arise from homogenous experiences over time. The mapping of such structured biographies, however, remains understudied. This paper explores intra- and intergenerational mobility patterns in the upper strata of the Norwegian class structure and aims to include temporal processes and mult…
Upper-class trajectories
This article explores a much theorized but rarely empirically investigated temporal component to the structuring of life chances at the apex of the class structure. By following 21 complete birth cohorts, I utilize sequence analysis and systematically explore pathways that lead to the Norwegian upper class during 10 years of adulthood. Separate analyses of each cohort map these trajectories at different stages of adult life and cross-cohort simil…
Enduring contexts
Although temporal processes are fundamental to the 'spatialization of class', they remain understudied. This article thus provides empirical evidence of residential pathways in the Oslo region over the life course; it does so by using population-wide data in a 24-year panel, while focusing on residency in affluent and deprived areas. By utilizing sequencing and clustering techniques, the analysis shows that exposure to dense poverty and affluence…
Forms of Capital and Modes of Closure in Upper Class Reproduction
We investigate the recruitment into the upper class, analysing the impact of different forms of capital and modes of closure. Unlike many Bourdieu-influenced approaches to class, we systematically investigate divisions by composition of capital: the relative weight of economic to cultural capital. We find capital-specific barriers to mobility: access to the upper class fractions is not only differentiated by one's parents' volume of capital or th…
Geographies of class advantage
Class analysts are often concerned with intergenerational transmission of advantage, mapping the ways in which parental resources foster favourable life-chances for their offspring. However, whether such class-specific resources are accessible to broader communities has scarcely been researched within a framework of class mobility. By combining methodological insights from neighbourhood research with theoretical concerns of class advantage, this …
Wealth Accumulation and Opportunity Hoarding
Although the Scandinavian countries are often considered to epitomize social democratic governance, Scandinavia's profound wealth inequalities, seen in relation to the more modest income differences, constitutes a fascinating paradox. Drawing on class theoretical concerns with strategies for reproduction and a Bourdieusian emphasis on class fractions, we explore how class-origin wealth gaps evolved over the past 25 years in Norway, and how they c…
Forms of Capital and Modes of Closure in Upper Class Reproduction
We investigate the recruitment into the upper class, analysing the impact of different forms of capital and modes of closure. Unlike many Bourdieu-influenced approaches to class, we systematically investigate divisions by composition of capital: the relative weight of economic to cultural capital. We find capital-specific barriers to mobility: access to the upper class fractions is not only differentiated by one's parents' volume of capital or th…
Family Wealth and the Class Ceiling
In this article we demonstrate that those from working-class backgrounds face a powerful 'class ceiling' in elite occupations. Examining how class origin shapes economic returns in the Norwegian upper class (3.8% of the population), we first find that the income advantage enjoyed by those from privileged backgrounds increases sharply as they ascend the income distribution in both elite business and cultural fields. Second, we show that those from…
Mobility closure in the upper class
Most understandings of the ways classes become social groupings centre on processes of mobility closure whereby mutual appreciation and recognition within classes arise from homogenous experiences over time. The mapping of such structured biographies, however, remains understudied. This paper explores intra- and intergenerational mobility patterns in the upper strata of the Norwegian class structure and aims to include temporal processes and mult…
Geographies of class advantage
Class analysts are often concerned with intergenerational transmission of advantage, mapping the ways in which parental resources foster favourable life-chances for their offspring. However, whether such class-specific resources are accessible to broader communities has scarcely been researched within a framework of class mobility. By combining methodological insights from neighbourhood research with theoretical concerns of class advantage, this …
Upper-class trajectories
This article explores a much theorized but rarely empirically investigated temporal component to the structuring of life chances at the apex of the class structure. By following 21 complete birth cohorts, I utilize sequence analysis and systematically explore pathways that lead to the Norwegian upper class during 10 years of adulthood. Separate analyses of each cohort map these trajectories at different stages of adult life and cross-cohort simil…
Dynastic cores and the borrowed time of newcomers. Wealth accumulation and the Norwegian one percent
This paper explores the trajectories of Norwegians who, in their late-thirties, possessed financial assets, such as securities, company shares and stocks, qualifying them as the wealthiest one percent nationally. We describe the accumulation of financial wealth over a 25-year period in adulthood and study how different wealth sequences are linked to family origins and kinship ties. Although some Norwegians manage to build up large fortunes from r…
Upper-class romance
This article focuses on social closure by way of marital homogamy within the upper class. It offers new insights into the social structuring of romantic partnerships, while drawing on research on assortative mating and contemporary elite and class analysis. The analysis is based on detailed data covering the entire Norwegian population. Our main point of focus is the upper class, whose patterns of partner choice have been little studied. By drawi…
Enduring contexts
Although temporal processes are fundamental to the 'spatialization of class', they remain understudied. This article thus provides empirical evidence of residential pathways in the Oslo region over the life course; it does so by using population-wide data in a 24-year panel, while focusing on residency in affluent and deprived areas. By utilizing sequencing and clustering techniques, the analysis shows that exposure to dense poverty and affluence…
Varieties of Economic Elites? Preliminary Results From the World Elite Database (WED)
The strategies, decisions and beliefs of those who occupy prominent positions of economic power have influence on very large corporations and the markets they dominate, on vast amounts of economic resources, and on the rules of the game. However, the sociology of elites faces a dual challenge: divergent conceptualisations of what can be considered as a position of economic power and internationally incompatible sources of information hinder compa…
Wealth and Class Analysis
Wealth inequalities are increasingly prominent in contemporary societies but they have not been systematically addressed by sociological class analysis. However, class analysis should have a lot to offer: in the literature on wealth inequality, wealth is often approached as a unidimensional distribution - a quantity one can possess more or less of, crystallized in notions of the Top 1%. In this theoretical intervention, we discuss ways in which c…
Quantifying class trajectories
In this article, I discuss the potential for quantitatively accounting of the social world as relationally constituted in both a topological and a temporal sense. As statistical procedures rest on underlying assumptions of the social world, I emphasise how multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) thinks relationally, as Bourdieu famously proclaimed, but to a lesser extent addresses the temporal pattering of social life. I point to the beneficial pr…
Geographies of class advantage
Class analysts are often concerned with intergenerational transmission of advantage, mapping the ways in which parental resources foster favourable life-chances for their offspring. However, whether such class-specific resources are accessible to broader communities has scarcely been researched within a framework of class mobility. By combining methodological insights from neighbourhood research with theoretical concerns of class advantage, this …
Forms of Capital and Modes of Closure in Upper Class Reproduction
We investigate the recruitment into the upper class, analysing the impact of different forms of capital and modes of closure. Unlike many Bourdieu-influenced approaches to class, we systematically investigate divisions by composition of capital: the relative weight of economic to cultural capital. We find capital-specific barriers to mobility: access to the upper class fractions is not only differentiated by one's parents' volume of capital or th…
Upper-class trajectories
This article explores a much theorized but rarely empirically investigated temporal component to the structuring of life chances at the apex of the class structure. By following 21 complete birth cohorts, I utilize sequence analysis and systematically explore pathways that lead to the Norwegian upper class during 10 years of adulthood. Separate analyses of each cohort map these trajectories at different stages of adult life and cross-cohort simil…
Enduring contexts
Although temporal processes are fundamental to the 'spatialization of class', they remain understudied. This article thus provides empirical evidence of residential pathways in the Oslo region over the life course; it does so by using population-wide data in a 24-year panel, while focusing on residency in affluent and deprived areas. By utilizing sequencing and clustering techniques, the analysis shows that exposure to dense poverty and affluence…
Mobility closure in the upper class
Most understandings of the ways classes become social groupings centre on processes of mobility closure whereby mutual appreciation and recognition within classes arise from homogenous experiences over time. The mapping of such structured biographies, however, remains understudied. This paper explores intra- and intergenerational mobility patterns in the upper strata of the Norwegian class structure and aims to include temporal processes and mult…
Upper-class romance
This article focuses on social closure by way of marital homogamy within the upper class. It offers new insights into the social structuring of romantic partnerships, while drawing on research on assortative mating and contemporary elite and class analysis. The analysis is based on detailed data covering the entire Norwegian population. Our main point of focus is the upper class, whose patterns of partner choice have been little studied. By drawi…
Wealth Accumulation and Opportunity Hoarding
Although the Scandinavian countries are often considered to epitomize social democratic governance, Scandinavia's profound wealth inequalities, seen in relation to the more modest income differences, constitutes a fascinating paradox. Drawing on class theoretical concerns with strategies for reproduction and a Bourdieusian emphasis on class fractions, we explore how class-origin wealth gaps evolved over the past 25 years in Norway, and how they c…
Family Wealth and the Class Ceiling
In this article we demonstrate that those from working-class backgrounds face a powerful 'class ceiling' in elite occupations. Examining how class origin shapes economic returns in the Norwegian upper class (3.8% of the population), we first find that the income advantage enjoyed by those from privileged backgrounds increases sharply as they ascend the income distribution in both elite business and cultural fields. Second, we show that those from…
Quantifying class trajectories
In this article, I discuss the potential for quantitatively accounting of the social world as relationally constituted in both a topological and a temporal sense. As statistical procedures rest on underlying assumptions of the social world, I emphasise how multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) thinks relationally, as Bourdieu famously proclaimed, but to a lesser extent addresses the temporal pattering of social life. I point to the beneficial pr…
Dynastic cores and the borrowed time of newcomers. Wealth accumulation and the Norwegian one percent
This paper explores the trajectories of Norwegians who, in their late-thirties, possessed financial assets, such as securities, company shares and stocks, qualifying them as the wealthiest one percent nationally. We describe the accumulation of financial wealth over a 25-year period in adulthood and study how different wealth sequences are linked to family origins and kinship ties. Although some Norwegians manage to build up large fortunes from r…
Nation‐builders and market architects
This paper examines the types of work that jurists have historically undertaken and maps how opportunities for legal practice have been shaped by social origins across three centuries: after constitutional independence in the mid‐1800s, during industrial capitalism in the mid‐1900s, and at present‐day advanced capitalism. I analyze historical archive data on law graduates from the 19th and 20th centuries in combination with administrative registr…
Varieties of Economic Elites? Preliminary Results From the World Elite Database (WED)
The strategies, decisions and beliefs of those who occupy prominent positions of economic power have influence on very large corporations and the markets they dominate, on vast amounts of economic resources, and on the rules of the game. However, the sociology of elites faces a dual challenge: divergent conceptualisations of what can be considered as a position of economic power and internationally incompatible sources of information hinder compa…
Wealth and Class Analysis
Wealth inequalities are increasingly prominent in contemporary societies but they have not been systematically addressed by sociological class analysis. However, class analysis should have a lot to offer: in the literature on wealth inequality, wealth is often approached as a unidimensional distribution - a quantity one can possess more or less of, crystallized in notions of the Top 1%. In this theoretical intervention, we discuss ways in which c…
Sociology (13 works) · Economics (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Social and Cultural Dynamics (9 works) · Social science (8 works) · Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Demographic economics (6 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Class (philosophy (5 works)