Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-25-2024
Abstract
This article discusses the methodological implications of a recent study on Luxembourg’s offshore financial center. Insight from actor-network theory was essential in undertaking its ethnographic research with elites from the country’s state and financial institutions. My intention in documenting this approach is to provide a template for ethnographers studying other localized contexts of global politico-economic significance, in which elite actors usually seek to curtail the enquiries of investigators. With this actor-network from Luxembourg as an example, I demonstrate how elite and difficult-to-access milieus can be entered via “networking” coupled with outreach via interviews and email correspondence. As I show, by initiating various modalities of entry into the context in question, ethnographers can establish themselves within an actor-network for the purposes of conducting interviews and participant-observation with elite interlocutors.
Recommended Citation
Weeks, Samuel. 2024. “An Anthropologist Goes Offshore, or, Creating an Actor-Network Among Finance Elites.” Research in Economic Anthropology 43: 63-80.
Language
English
Comments
This is an original manuscript of an article published by Emerald Publishing Limited in Research in Economic Anthropology, May 2024, Volume 43, Pages 63-80.
The published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1108/S0190-128120240000043005. Copyright © 2024 by Emerald Publishing Limited.