Jules Naudet is CNRS associate research professor at the EHESS Center for South Asian Studies (CEIAS) and a 2021-2022 CASBS Fellow (Stanford University). His earlier work looked at upward social mobility in India, the US and France and he is the author of Stepping into the Elite (Oxford University Press, 2018), a book that revisits the classical question of the experience of moving from one class to another. As an inequality scholar, he is interested in the social institution of caste and, along with Surinder S. Jodhka (JNU), he co-edited the Oxford University Press Handbook of Caste in Modern Times (forthcoming 2022). Naudet is also the co-editor-in-chief of La Vie des Idées/Books & Ideas, an online journal hosted by the Collège de France. https://booksandideas.net/About-us.html

His current work looks at the sociability and social networks of members of the elite in India and in France. He notably conducted a participant ethnography of elite sociability in India. His observations reveal how elite parties and gatherings are driven by the ceaseless collision of multiple motivations and agendas and how these clashes allow for the unfolding of instrumental strategies that shape the opportunity structure, opening paths of mobility to some and shutting down opportunities for others. More recently, Naudet, along with Bruno Cousin (CEE, Sciences Po), has also explored elite sociability in the French context through an ethnography of the Paris inner-circle of power.

Publications