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Pacific Standard
September 9, 2013.

Meet the Flexians. (Excerpt)

By Lisa Margonelli, contributing editor, who has written about energy, the environment, science, and policy for such publications as Forbes, Slate, Politico, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and many others.

A new professional class of movers and shakers—people who serve overlapping roles in government, business, and media with smiling finesse—is controlling the flow of power and money in America. The anthropologist Janine Wedel is bent on making us understand just how dangerous this new normal can be.

Across the political spectrum, there is a sense that something has taken control of the institutions that we used to trust. According to Wedel, that something is a new class of power brokers with a new set of cultural norms. Wedel calls these power brokers "flexians."

A flexian, as Wedel defines the term, is a creature peculiar to our moment in history: a mover and shaker who serves multiple, overlapping roles with smiling finesse—business consultant, think tank fellow, government adviser. He is someone who "glides in and around the organizations that enlist his services," she writes in her book Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market. "It is not just his time that is divided. His loyalties, too, are often flexible. Even the short-term consultant doing one project at a time cannot afford to owe too much allegiance to the company or government agency. Such individuals are in these organizations (some of the time anyway), but they are seldom of them."

Full text of the article available in PDF format.