Research
Dr. Wilson is a sociologist who studies how work, culture, and social inequality get linked together in our changing economy. Through closely examining settings such as full-service restaurants, craft breweries, and white-collar government offices, his scholarship illuminates how forces of social inequality stem from a combination of organizational structures, workplace cultures, and inter-personal relationships. As a trained ethnographer, Dr. Wilson brings leading academic theories in conversation with the everyday experiences and perspectives of workers themselves.
Recent Project: Handcrafted Careers, Authenticity, and Artisanal Consumption in the Craft Beer Industry
Dr. Wilson’s recent project (2019-2024) is an ethnography of craft beer work in United States. Dr. Wilson examines how race, class, and gender inequalities manifest in modern craft industries that are centered on passion, artisanship, and authenticity.
This research asks big questions about how racism, sexism, and class dynamics impact the career paths of craft beer’s workers, exploring why (and how) men tend to move into creative roles of authority, whereas women are steered towards hospitality and working-class or Latinx workers into warehouse roles.
Within the umbrella of this project, Dr. Wilson also co-authored Beer and Society: How We Make Beer, and Beer Makes Us. Co-written with Dr. Asa Stone, an Advanced Cicerone and psychology professor, the book explores issues of identity, work, business, and culture in the world of beer. Drawing from both scholarly insights and industry expertise, this book offers a critical perspective on how beer and society are intertwined, including how beer is embedded within our larger economic system, racial hierarchies, and existing systems of power in our society. Together, these scholars detail how the recent growth of women and people of color in the beer industry is reshaping these craft workplaces to be more inclusive for both workers and consumers, though these efforts have also been met with pockets of resistance within the industry.
image from Oregonlive.com
Ongoing Project: Tip Work in the New Economy
Tipping, as a deeply-held cultural practice in the U.S., has come under recent scrutiny due to labor activism surrounding tipped minimum wage laws and the disproportionate number of Black and Brown workers employed in these types of service workplaces. As his research on tipped workers — which builds on previous restaurant scholarship — is uncovering, tipping involves a blurry line between gift giving and market exchange that can reinforce a shadowy system of racial inequality in service workplaces. This is due to both limited access to higher-earning tipped jobs by members of disadvantaged groups, as well as the racialized, classed, and gendered assumptions that tipping customers bring with them into the service encounter.
Over the course of this project, Dr. Wilson expects to conduct further field research with two other groups of tipped workers over the next two years, exploring variations in meanings and manipulations within a tip-based economy that now amounts to over $47 billion dollars annually in the U.S. restaurant industry alone.
Examining Restaurant Work and Workers in Los Angeles (Past Project)
How workers navigate race, gender, and class in the food service industry
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.