Eli R Wilson
Biographic Data
| ID | 183070 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Eli R Wilson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Eli R |
| FAMILY NAME | Wilson |
| SIGNATURE | WILSON E R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of New Mexico |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2354-0734 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 35 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Balancing Acts
Many artists facing unpredictable employment seek other kinds of jobs beyond their respective industry to make ends meet. Yet, aside from noting the precariousness of work in the arts, existing scholarship says little about how these workers manage their employment beyond creative work and across multiple industries, leading to an incomplete portrait of artistic working lives. Based on a two-year qualitative study of the Nashville's downtown musi…
What’s Authentic to Me, Doesn’t Mean It’s Authentic to You”
Existing research illustrates that authenticity is a strategic accomplishment by cultural producers within commercial markets rather than a fixed attribute of objects, experiences, and spaces. This study examines how notions of culinary authenticity get discursively negotiated between cultural producers, consumers, and professional critics within the American culinary field. By analyzing popular food and restaurant blogs and social media forums, …
Handcrafted Careers
What do work career dynamics in contemporary labor settings tell us about how racism operates in ways that go beyond the explicitly exclusionary actions of management? Building on theories of racialized organizations, this research offers a ground-level examination of the career pathways of craft beer workers in the United States. Drawing on 107 in-depth interviews and two years of ethnographic fieldwork, I describe how workers engage in employme…
Beer Places
The Hidden Strains of 'Cool' Jobs
A growing number of workers today are drawn to jobs that offer symbolic and cultural rewards but not necessarily stable employment or livable wages. Existing literature posits the exploitative nature of this labor arrangement, where workers must weigh the 'cool' aspects of their jobs against other less desirable aspects. Yet what happens when both these dimensions of work are deeply intertwined and subject to changing perspectives? Drawing on eth…
Avoiding, Resisting and Enduring
Drawing on research on chefs and aspiring chefs in commercial kitchens, this article typologises workers’ strategic responses to violence and illustrates how these responses are shaped by occupational status and work experience, as well as industry structures. While previous scholarship indicates that workers actively avoid or resist violence in the workplace, this literature largely neglects ways in which workers endure violence in strategic way…
Panethnic boundaries and the making of white-collar minority identity in Hawai'i
Recent scholarship on ethnoracial identity formation documents the growth of panethnic and regionalised identities in the United States, which individuals express in response to both external racialisation processes as well as meta-group identity assertions by multiple ethnic groups. Yet how are panethnic identities shaped by organisational contexts, and how might the way individuals enact these group identities contribute to exclusionary process…
Sticking to it or Opting for Alternatives
Privileging Passion
Having or 'finding' passion for work has become an increasingly common cultural logic of work today, one that workers use to justify career choices and managers use to make hiring decisions. However, scholars have yet to articulate how workers enact this cultural logic of work in ways that may ultimately contribute to social inequality in modern workplaces. On the basis of 115 in-depth interviews and two years of ethnographic fieldwork in U.S. cr…
Managing Portfolio Lives
Tip Work
Tips constitute a growing form of income for roughly three million American workers today. While existing scholarship on tipping focuses on worker-customer dynamics, it neglects the implications of gratuities beyond the service counter. Drawing on the case of restaurant workers in Los Angeles, this study analyzes tip work, the bundle of social relations and labor experiences framed by tips in commercial settings. I argue that tipping strains rela…
Bridging the Service Divide
Eli R. Wilson, Bridging the Service Divide: Dual Labor Niches and Embedded Opportunities in Restaurant Work, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Vol. 4, No. 1, New Immigrant Labor Market Niches (January 2018), pp. 115-127
Stuck behind kitchen doors? Assessing the work prospects of latter-generation Latino workers in a Los Angeles restaurant
The disproportionate number of Latinos employed in unskilled US service industries appears to exemplify the bleak labour market prospects and inter-generational immobility facing this population. Yet as the children of immigrants enter "bad" service and retail jobs alongside the first generation, how might they be faring differently? Drawing on over two years of ethnographic research, this study examines the labour prospects of 1.5- and second-ge…
Privileging Passion
Having or 'finding' passion for work has become an increasingly common cultural logic of work today, one that workers use to justify career choices and managers use to make hiring decisions. However, scholars have yet to articulate how workers enact this cultural logic of work in ways that may ultimately contribute to social inequality in modern workplaces. On the basis of 115 in-depth interviews and two years of ethnographic fieldwork in U.S. cr…
Stuck behind kitchen doors? Assessing the work prospects of latter-generation Latino workers in a Los Angeles restaurant
The disproportionate number of Latinos employed in unskilled US service industries appears to exemplify the bleak labour market prospects and inter-generational immobility facing this population. Yet as the children of immigrants enter "bad" service and retail jobs alongside the first generation, how might they be faring differently? Drawing on over two years of ethnographic research, this study examines the labour prospects of 1.5- and second-ge…
Managing Portfolio Lives
Bridging the Service Divide
Eli R. Wilson, Bridging the Service Divide: Dual Labor Niches and Embedded Opportunities in Restaurant Work, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Vol. 4, No. 1, New Immigrant Labor Market Niches (January 2018), pp. 115-127
The Hidden Strains of 'Cool' Jobs
A growing number of workers today are drawn to jobs that offer symbolic and cultural rewards but not necessarily stable employment or livable wages. Existing literature posits the exploitative nature of this labor arrangement, where workers must weigh the 'cool' aspects of their jobs against other less desirable aspects. Yet what happens when both these dimensions of work are deeply intertwined and subject to changing perspectives? Drawing on eth…
Avoiding, Resisting and Enduring
Drawing on research on chefs and aspiring chefs in commercial kitchens, this article typologises workers’ strategic responses to violence and illustrates how these responses are shaped by occupational status and work experience, as well as industry structures. While previous scholarship indicates that workers actively avoid or resist violence in the workplace, this literature largely neglects ways in which workers endure violence in strategic way…
Tip Work
Tips constitute a growing form of income for roughly three million American workers today. While existing scholarship on tipping focuses on worker-customer dynamics, it neglects the implications of gratuities beyond the service counter. Drawing on the case of restaurant workers in Los Angeles, this study analyzes tip work, the bundle of social relations and labor experiences framed by tips in commercial settings. I argue that tipping strains rela…
Sticking to it or Opting for Alternatives
Panethnic boundaries and the making of white-collar minority identity in Hawai'i
Recent scholarship on ethnoracial identity formation documents the growth of panethnic and regionalised identities in the United States, which individuals express in response to both external racialisation processes as well as meta-group identity assertions by multiple ethnic groups. Yet how are panethnic identities shaped by organisational contexts, and how might the way individuals enact these group identities contribute to exclusionary process…
Bridging the Service Divide
Eli R. Wilson, Bridging the Service Divide: Dual Labor Niches and Embedded Opportunities in Restaurant Work, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Vol. 4, No. 1, New Immigrant Labor Market Niches (January 2018), pp. 115-127
Stuck behind kitchen doors? Assessing the work prospects of latter-generation Latino workers in a Los Angeles restaurant
The disproportionate number of Latinos employed in unskilled US service industries appears to exemplify the bleak labour market prospects and inter-generational immobility facing this population. Yet as the children of immigrants enter "bad" service and retail jobs alongside the first generation, how might they be faring differently? Drawing on over two years of ethnographic research, this study examines the labour prospects of 1.5- and second-ge…
Managing Portfolio Lives
Tip Work
Tips constitute a growing form of income for roughly three million American workers today. While existing scholarship on tipping focuses on worker-customer dynamics, it neglects the implications of gratuities beyond the service counter. Drawing on the case of restaurant workers in Los Angeles, this study analyzes tip work, the bundle of social relations and labor experiences framed by tips in commercial settings. I argue that tipping strains rela…
Sticking to it or Opting for Alternatives
Privileging Passion
Having or 'finding' passion for work has become an increasingly common cultural logic of work today, one that workers use to justify career choices and managers use to make hiring decisions. However, scholars have yet to articulate how workers enact this cultural logic of work in ways that may ultimately contribute to social inequality in modern workplaces. On the basis of 115 in-depth interviews and two years of ethnographic fieldwork in U.S. cr…
Avoiding, Resisting and Enduring
Drawing on research on chefs and aspiring chefs in commercial kitchens, this article typologises workers’ strategic responses to violence and illustrates how these responses are shaped by occupational status and work experience, as well as industry structures. While previous scholarship indicates that workers actively avoid or resist violence in the workplace, this literature largely neglects ways in which workers endure violence in strategic way…
Panethnic boundaries and the making of white-collar minority identity in Hawai'i
Recent scholarship on ethnoracial identity formation documents the growth of panethnic and regionalised identities in the United States, which individuals express in response to both external racialisation processes as well as meta-group identity assertions by multiple ethnic groups. Yet how are panethnic identities shaped by organisational contexts, and how might the way individuals enact these group identities contribute to exclusionary process…
Beer Places
The Hidden Strains of 'Cool' Jobs
A growing number of workers today are drawn to jobs that offer symbolic and cultural rewards but not necessarily stable employment or livable wages. Existing literature posits the exploitative nature of this labor arrangement, where workers must weigh the 'cool' aspects of their jobs against other less desirable aspects. Yet what happens when both these dimensions of work are deeply intertwined and subject to changing perspectives? Drawing on eth…
Handcrafted Careers
What do work career dynamics in contemporary labor settings tell us about how racism operates in ways that go beyond the explicitly exclusionary actions of management? Building on theories of racialized organizations, this research offers a ground-level examination of the career pathways of craft beer workers in the United States. Drawing on 107 in-depth interviews and two years of ethnographic fieldwork, I describe how workers engage in employme…
Balancing Acts
Many artists facing unpredictable employment seek other kinds of jobs beyond their respective industry to make ends meet. Yet, aside from noting the precariousness of work in the arts, existing scholarship says little about how these workers manage their employment beyond creative work and across multiple industries, leading to an incomplete portrait of artistic working lives. Based on a two-year qualitative study of the Nashville's downtown musi…
What’s Authentic to Me, Doesn’t Mean It’s Authentic to You”
Existing research illustrates that authenticity is a strategic accomplishment by cultural producers within commercial markets rather than a fixed attribute of objects, experiences, and spaces. This study examines how notions of culinary authenticity get discursively negotiated between cultural producers, consumers, and professional critics within the American culinary field. By analyzing popular food and restaurant blogs and social media forums, …
Sociology (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Ethnography (7 works) · Work (physics (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · Emotional Labor in Professions (6 works) · Public relations (6 works) · Engineering (5 works) · Business (4 works) · Craft (4 works)