Stone Inequality & Social Policy Seminar: Shay O'Brien

Kinship Interlocks

Shay O'Brien, Stone Program Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School

Abstract: How do elites persist over many generations? I bring together economic sociology and stratification to propose a new concept for the study of inequality from the top: kinship interlocks. Kinship interlocks are sectors of a kinship network that closely combine great wealth, status, and power. Just as corporate interlocks connect corporations through shared board members, kinship interlocks connect economic, political, and social elites through family. Using an iterative mixed-methods approach, I argue that the gendered exchange of resources in kinship interlocks generates elite persistence through three mechanisms. Kinship interlocks protect kin from economic and legal risk, propel kin into greater resource levels, and connect types of elites within and across geographic regions. The analysis is based on a novel database consisting of all economic, political, and social elites in the first 125 years of Dallas history, along with all known mutual family ties. 

Shay O'Brien studies the kinship networks that weave elites together. Her mixed-methods research tracks the capture and circulation of resources through upper-class populations over time, with a particular focus on women, whiteness, and wealth. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Stone Program in Wealth Distribution, Inequality, and Social Policy at the Kennedy School, and received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University. Her work has been supported by an American Sociological Association Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, and funding from multiple initiatives at both Harvard and Princeton.