Dissertation

A Relative Advantage: Sociology of the San Francisco Bohemian Club

For over 150 years private men's clubs have existed as a place of personal retreat for socio-economic elite men in American society. U.S. elite men's clubs are seen by some social scientists as the American equivalent to European male aristocracy. Private men's clubs have been described as a fundamental element of maintaining the "old boy networks" of power in modern society (Rogers 1988 p.179). Progressive attacks on the exclusivity of all-white-male clubs, while not new historically, have increased in the last three decades (Baxter 1992). This has led clubs to initiate token changes that have gradually broken the barriers of race, ethnicity and gender in many of the private men's clubs in the United States. But just how important to networks of power are these clubs in the United States?

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