Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington will spend the fellowship year designing and collecting pilot data for a multi-year research project on transnational professionals: the tiny group of global “super-movers” who shape conditions under which we live, from pandemic response to manufacturing standards, and from international corporate law to offshore wealth management. While globalization and the rise of multi-national firms have shifted power to these highly mobile experts, social science knows very little about them. Scattered research in multiple disciplines has examined subsets of this group, suggesting that they have a class consciousness as well as the capacity to mobilize, but such insights have yet to be assembled into a coherent global picture. That will be the goal of the study to be designed at CASBS.

Harrington is professor of economic sociology at Dartmouth College. Since 2007, her research has examined inequality from the top end of the socioeconomic spectrum, via the workings of the offshore financial system. To access this secretive system, Harrington spent two years earning accreditation as a wealth manager, followed by eight years of immersive fieldwork with practicing wealth managers in 19 offshore financial centers like Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, and Mauritius. This work has produced two award-winning books on offshore finance, in addition to two previous books on the social underpinnings of financial markets. Harrington’s books, articles and op-eds can be found at www.brookeharrington.com.