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.
The very nature of elites makes them difficult for social researchers to study. This volume provides valuable insights into how researchers can successfully gain access to elite settings. Using their actual experiences, the contributors provide constructive advice as well as cautionary tales about how they learned to manoeuvre and become accepted in worlds otherwise closed to them. Three broad research areas are covered: business elites; professional elites; and community and political elites. Useful information is given on how researchers in these areas can gather data, construct interview strategies, write about their subjects and come to experience the research process.
