Eli Wilson
Associate Professor
Organizations, Information & Learning Sciences, University of New Mexico
- Email:
- erwilson18@unm.edu
- Office:
- SSCI 1076
- Website
Education
PhD, Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles (2017)
Research Interests
Work and Organizations, Race and Ethnicity, Social Inequality, Culture, EthnographyResearch Statement:
Dr. Wilson is a sociologist who studies race, work, and social inequality. His research examines how social inequalities of race, class, and gender get reproduced - and sometimes contested - in contemporary workplaces. He is especially interested in types of work that involve interactive service labor and evoke specialized consumption tastes (such as craft or artisanal products). These are jobs that don’t always feel like work done in spaces that don’t always feel as exclusionary as they often are. Dr. Wilson’s scholarship illuminates how forces of inequality do not merely reflect explicit managerial malpractice but, rather, complex processes embedded within organizational structures. As a trained ethnographer, Dr. Wilson engages these research themes from the ground up, anchored by the everyday experiences, perspectives, and inter-relations of workers themselves.
Books:
Handcrafted Careers: Working the Artisan Economy of Craft Beers
As workers attempt new modes of employment in the era of the Great Resignation, they face a labor landscape that is increasingly uncertain and stubbornly unequal. With Handcrafted Careers, sociologist Eli Revelle Yano Wilson dives headfirst into the everyday lives of workers in the craft beer industry to address key questions facing American workers today: about what makes a good career, who gets to have one, and how careers progress without established models.
Beer and Society: How We Make Beer and Beer Makes Us
Beer and Society: How We Make Beer and Beer Makes Us takes readers on a lively journey through the social, cultural, and economic dimensions of the modern beer world. This book illustrates that beer is far more than a beverage. As a finely-crafted cultural product, beer can be a part of our identity, a source of pleasure and camaraderie, an object of connoisseurship, and a livelihood for those who are behind the beer itself. Drawing on leading sociological and psychological perspectives, the authors argue that our enduring relationship with beer reflects the very roots of our society, including its collective values and norms, power structures, and persistent inequities based on race, gender, sexuality, and social class. Beer and Society explores beer as an embodiment of who we are and a force to energize social change.
Wilson, Eli R. and Asa B. Stone. 2022. Beer and Society: How We Make Beer and Beer Makes Us. Rowman & Littlefield.
Available for purchase here.
Front of the House, Back of the House: Race and Inequality in the Lives of Restaurant Workers
Two unequal worlds of work exist within the upscale restaurant scene of Los Angeles. White, college-educated servers operate in the front of the house—also known as the public areas of the restaurant—while Latino immigrants toil in the back of the house and out of customer view.
In Front of the House, Back of the House, Eli Revelle Yano Wilson shows us what keeps these workers apart, exploring race, class, and gender inequalities in the food service industry.
Drawing on research at three different high-end restaurants in Los Angeles, Wilson highlights why these inequalities persist in the twenty-first century, pointing to discriminatory hiring and supervisory practices that ultimately grant educated whites access to the most desirable positions. Additionally, he shows us how workers navigate these inequalities under the same roof, making sense of their jobs, their identities, and each other in a world that reinforces their separateness.
Front of the House, Back of the House takes us behind the scenes of the food service industry, providing a window into the unequal lives of white and Latino restaurant workers.
Front of the House, Back of the House was awarded 'Outstanding Academic Title' by Choice Magazine in 2021 along with recieving an honorable mention from Komarovsky Book Award from the Eastern Sociological Society.
Available for purchase here.
Recent/Select Publications:
Wilson, Eli R. 2024. “Handcrafted Careers: How Workers Navigate Racialized Career Pathways in the Craft Beer Industry.” Social Problems: https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spae006
Delgaty, Aaron and Eli R. Wilson (equal authorship). 2023. "The Hidden Strains of 'Cool' Jobs." Sociology. DOI: 0.17.7/00380385231172129.
Meiser, Ellen T. and Eli R. Wilson. 2023. “Avoiding, Resisting, Enduring: Responses to Workplace Violence in Professional Kitchens.” Work, Employment and Society: 1-22. DOI: 10.1177/09500170231159845.
Wilson, Eli R. 2022. "Privileging Passion: How the Cultural Logic of Work Perpetuates Social Inequality in the Craft Beer Industry." Socius 8: 1-12. DOI: 10.1177/23780231221121064.
Wilson Eli R. 2022. “'It Could Never Be About Just Beer': Race, Gender, and Marked Professional Identity in Craft Beer.” Journal of Professions and Organization 9(2): 232-245.
Awards:
- Outstanding Teacher of the Year, 2024. The University of New Mexico.
- Honorable Mention, Komarovsky Book Award, Eastern Sociological Society, 2022. Front of the House, Back of the House: Race and Inequality in the Lives of Restaurant Workers.
Courses:
- Introduction to Sociology (SOCI 1110)
- Future of Work & Inequality (SOCI 398)
- Race and Inequality (SOCI 420)
- Race and Ethnic Relations (Graduate)
- Professional Writing for the Social Sciences (Graduate)
