Secrecy, Simmel and the New Sociology of Wealth

What relevance does an early twentieth century thinker like Simmel have for the contempo-rary sociology of wealth? This paper suggests that Simmel???s classic work on the secret and secret societies is embedded but largely unacknowledged in twenty-first century wealth re-search. Thus, the purpose of this discussion is to make these contributions more visible and sketch their implications for new directions in the field.