Global Elites in Flux: Cultural Capital and Power after Globalization

In the post-globalization era, global elites face a transformed landscape of resurgent national sovereignty and civilizational rhetoric. This article examines how transnational power-holders-once emblematic of a borderless world - are recalibrating their cultural strategies and legitimacy mechanisms amid these shifts. Drawing on cultural sociology and elite theory (Bourdieu, Bauman, Castells, Gramsci), the analysis integrates non-Western scholarly perspectives. It reconceptualizes cosmopolitan elite culture under conditions of de-globalization. We argue that global elites are neither passive victims of de-globalization nor static cosmopolitans. Instead, they act as cultural brokers who selectively adjust their identities and narratives. Some accentuate patriotic or civilizational themes to align with ascendant statecentric discourses, while others redouble on universalist rhetoric through new transnational alliances. Comparative illustrations from Western countries, Russia, China, and T & uuml;rkiye demonstrate that elites are actively adapting to a fragmented world order. These shifts suggest that sociological inquiry needs to move beyond treating globalization as a given context and toward analyzing the cultural dynamics of elite power in a fractured world-one where questions of meaning, identity, and legitimacy have become as pivotal as economic forces.