Thick Ethnography for Elite Empathy

First‑hand, detailed ethnographic immersion (staying in miners’ lodging, doing the work, documenting expenditures) is an effective persuasion tool to close the empathy gap between symbolic elites and working people. Modern progressive strategy should pair policy proposals with systematic, thick descriptions that reveal how elite comforts are materially premised on others’ labor. — If adopted, this tactic would change how reform movements persuade affluent voters and design reforms—shifting emphasis from abstract moralizing to concrete, experience‑based evidence that ties policy to lived trade‑offs.