 Marcus has studied "elites"—people with a great amount of social power.He has researched and written about nobility in Tonga, an upper-class group with family fortunes in Galveston, Texas, and a Portuguese nobleman.In two books, "Writing Culture" and "Anthropology as Cultural Critique", he argues that anthropologists typically frame their thoughts according to their own social, political, and literary history, and are inclined to study people with less power and status than themselves.