Ethnographic Research among Elites in the Kingdom of Tonga: Some Methodological Considerations

There is a paucity of ethnographic research on elites. This paper gives an account of elite research in a complex, but small-scale, nation-state, the Kingdom of Tonga of western Polynesia. It raises issues concerning the application of a standard ethnographic approach to elite research but makes no attempt to review existing theories about upper classes and elites. The paper does describe and define the characteristics of the social structural domains from which old and new strategic elites have been recruited and which provide the informal and semiprivate contexts of their formal and public activities.