Investigating the Internationalisation of State Nobility: A Reflexive Return to Double Game Strategies – An interview with Yves DEZALAY

This interview with Yves Dezalay focuses on his research strategy and the link between a Bourdieusian approach and a multi-sited ethnography. Yves Dezalay explains his strategy of doing interviews with the lawyers who are part of their “state nobilities”, in what order to interview them, with whom to begin and for what reasons. He warned about the dangers of trying to reproduce the ways of questioning elite actors as if they were important individuals without taking into account more socio genetic perspectives and especially the prosopography of the group and their respective positions. Collective biographies analysing the relations between the actors are the most important part of the research.