Researching ruling-class men: biography, autobiography, life history

There has been a lot of use of the concept 'hegemonic masculinity' and little discussion of its meaning. Because the problem of distance from and access to men of great wealth and power cannot be resolved through traditional interviewing and participatory observation techniques, this article develops an alternative methods by which the masculinity of hegemonic might be investigated. It argues that the biographies and autobiographies of ruling-class men can be seen as 'found life histories' and that the technique of 'saturation' developed by Bertaux and Bertaux-Wiame in the study of life histories can be applied usefully to them. When particular facts in the biographies and autobiographies show up with regularity, the it becomes obvious that certain elements are not due to change personal characteristics, but are constitutive of the social relations of ruling-class men The article proposes that it is possible to undertake a sociology of ruling-class masculinity which solves problems of distance and access by using autobiographies and biographies of very rich men and those around them, and which tackles the problem of truthfulness by developing a collective portrait of them, and which takes the problem of truthfulness by developing a collective protrait of them through the method of saturation.