In recent decades, the global wealth of the rich has soared to leave huge chasms of wealth inequality. This book argues that we cannot talk about inequalities in Britain today without talking about the monarchy.
Running the Family Firm explores the postwar British monarchy in order to understand its economic, political, social and cultural functions. Although the monarchy is usually positioned as a backward-looking, archaic institution and an irrelevant anachronism to corporate forms of wealth and power, the relationship between monarchy and capitalism is as old as capitalism itself. This book frames the monarchy as the gold standard corporation: The Firm. Using a set of case studies – the Queen, Prince Charles, Prince Harry, Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle – it contends that The Firm’s power is disguised through careful stage management of media representations of the royal family. In so doing, it extends conventional understandings of what monarchy is and why it matters.
Table of Content
Introduction: Why does monarchy matter? 1 The (Family) Firm: Labour, capital and corporate power 2 ‘The greatest show on earth’: Monarchy and media power 3 ‘Queen of Scots’: National identities, sovereignty and the body politic 4 Let them have Poundbury! Land, property and pastoralism 5 ‘I am Invictus’: Masculinities, ‘philanthrocapitalism’ and the military-industrial complex 6 The heteromonarchy: Kate
Middleton, ‘
middle-classness’ and family values 7 Megxitting the Firm: Race, postcolonialism and diversity capital Postscript: The post-royals Notes Index
About the author
Laura Clancy is a Lecturer in Media at Lancaster University
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