ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the potentials and pitfalls of employing geometric data analysis (GDA) to researching transnational objects from a field-analytical perspective. It draws on the long-term collective experiences made by the author and his research collaborators during three large collective research projects on Europe’s elite. Issues and problems encountered at different phases of these studies are analyzed and put into context of the rich tradition of studies that use Pierre Bourdieu’s relational concept of ‘field’ beyond the nation state. The author focuses on how research objects are constructed throughout the research process, the data collection process, the management of biographic databases, and the statistical analysis of the data. In all three research projects, prosopographical databases, statistical and visual representations are essential for formalizing and operationalizing the concept of field in the framework of transnational studies.
