Today´s podcast features Ashley Mears, associate professor of sociology at Boston University. Ashley´s research focuses on sociology of culture, gender and economic sociology and she has focused on the world of the rich and famous that most of us do not have access to. Her first book was a participant observation where she worked as a model in New York and London, and her second book, Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit, was recently published by Princeton University Press. In that book, she focused on the super rich and explored how they spent money on partying and on other things that many would consider unneccessary, with an attention to how the relationship and position of gender is within this group. Sigrun and Ashley discuss both these projects and how the focus on the super rich can shed light on inequality and class divisions.
