Studying Elites Using Qualitative Methods

Rosanna Hertz is the 1919 Reunion Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. She is the author of Single By Chance, Mothers By Choice: How Women are Choosing Parenthood Without Marriage and Creating the New American Family (Oxford Press, 2008). She is also the author or co-author of five edited collections which focus on the use of qualitative methods including Open to Disruption: Time and Craft in the Practice of Slow Sociology (Vanderbilt University, 2015) with Anita Ilta Garey and Margaret K. Nelson.

• Introduction - Rosanna Hertz and Jonathan B ImberPART ONE: BUSINESS ELITESInterviewing Important People in Big Companies - Robert J ThomasReaching Corporate Executives - Michael UseemFielding Hot Topics in Cool Settings - Peter Cleary Yeager and Kathy E KramThe Study of Corporate EthicsUsing Electronic Media to Support Fieldwork in a Corporate Setting - John P Workman JrTales from the Field - Paul M HirschLearning from Researchers′ AccountsPART TWO: PROFESSIONAL ELITESStopping the Spin and Becoming a Prop - Joshua GamsonFieldwork on Hollywood ElitesReflections on Fieldwork in a Complex Organization - Jennifer L PierceLawyers, Ethnographic Authority, and Lethal WeaponsNegotiating Status - Alan AldridgeSocial Scientists and Anglican ClergyHow I Learned What a Crock Was - Howard S BeckerPART THREE: COMMUNITY AND POLITICAL ELITES`Surely You′re Not in This Just to Be Helpful′ - Susan A OstranderAccess, Rapport, and Interviews in Three Studies of ElitesLocal Knowledge and Local Power - Albert HunterNotes on the Ethnography of Local Community ElitesResearch as a Communication Act - Hanna HerzogA Study on Israeli Women in Local Politics Exploding Anthropology′s Canon in the World of the Bomb - Hugh GustersonEthnographic Writing on Militarism