Abstract
Studying elites and, more particularly, privileged men is worthwhile because the favourable position of these individuals and groups in the social hierarchy allows them to make significant material and cultural impact on the world. Often, such an advantage is unearned and involves a sense of entitlement and lack of awareness of being in possession of it. It is therefore crucial to understand how this power operates and is maintained, by disrupting the invisibility of privilege. This chapter addresses methodological issues pertaining to the study of men, masculinities and privilege, drawing on privileged men’s career narratives. I focus on a particular methodological problem I encountered when studying the career narratives of male managers from an intersectional perspective: the invisibility of privilege in these accounts. In sociological research, intersectional approaches typically assume identifying socially constructed categories of identity and difference in people’s accounts of their experiences and studying relationships between these. However, the narratives of the male managers in question lacked references to social categories (gender, race, class etc.) in their self-descriptions. This chapter explores this problem and discusses some potential methodological solutions and ways forward. Finally, I suggest that some recent cultural changes and transforming gender relations are gradually marking privileged men and masculinities. Masculinity, then, is increasingly emerging from the status of an unmarked category.
