From: Dan Ryan <danryan at mills.edu>
Alas, I don't have any suggestions in response to Kelley's forwarded question, but I think I might use it as an example in my research methods class of a way of posing a question which invites us to make two classic mistakes (1) sampling on the dependent variable, and (2) privileging attributes over structural position. I don't mean to imply that the question asker would make these errors, but the question is phrased very nicely to illustrate them.
Dan
--- Also, Michael, i'd join the working class lists and ask there. i had an MBA student who was once interested in the topic, mostly because he wanted to know so he couldn't emulate them and become fabulously wealthy. i had to dissuade him from pursuing that topic, since he wasn't interested in actually analyzing the findings, but in taking them at face value as just the "way things are".
i don't think terribly many sociologists would be interested in that sort of question. there are a few folks who study the discourse of upward mobility: the ways in which people represent their successful lives to everyone else. they do life histories and content analysis of books written by people who've become wealthy, as well as self-help books about how to get rich.
one interesting aside: one of my mentors was interested in life histories and women's representations of their success v. men's. men spoke about how they had a goal and systematically pursued it, whereas women tended to accent the serendipitous aspects of their success, being in the right place at the right time, for instance.
the subfield of social-psychology and psychological social psychology might have some folks interested, but those folks are still more interested in social interaction, than in character traits conceived of as unrelated to socialization, broadly understood.
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