2017 - 2024 | VUB PhD project
Project description
The occupation of “butler” – the congenial household manager that the popular imagination generally associates with figures like Jeeves or scenes from Downton Abbey – is currently undergoing a revival. In line with growing economic inequality, over the last thirty years, butlers have increasingly found employment working for the emergent, global ‘super-rich’ in addition to their traditional, aristocratic employers. As a case study, butlers highlight how many of the symbolic advantages that elites enjoy, such as their ability to express ‘class’ in the home and in leisure, are in fact supported by the employment of skilled labour. This research project explores this relationship through original ethnographic research where the researcher actually trained as a butler and worked as a butler in the UK. These observations are supplemented with extensive interviews with professional butlers across the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as a historical content analysis of the professional literature.
