Richard E. Ocejo

I am professor of sociology at John Jay College and the CUNY Graduate Center, where I also direct the MA program in International Migration Studies. I have been the Editor of City & Community, an official journal of the American Sociological Association, since 2021. My most recent book, Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy (Princeton University Press; 2017), is about the transformation of low-status occupations into "cool," cultural taste-making jobs (cocktail bartenders, craft distillers, upscale men's barbers, and whole animal butchers). And my first book, Upscaling Downtown: From Bowery Saloons to Cocktail Bars in New York City, about nightlife and conflict in gentrified neighborhoods, was also published by Princeton University Press in 2014. My work has appeared in such journals as Social Problems, Sociological Perspectives, the Journal of Urban Affairs, Urban Affairs Review, City & Community, Poetics, and Ethnography. I am also the editor of Research in Urban Sociology, Volume 16: Urban Ethnography: Legacies and Challenges (Emerald, 2019) and Ethnography and the City: Readings on Doing Urban Fieldwork (Routledge; 2012), and serve on the editorical boards of the journals Work and Occupations, Metropolitics, and the Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography. My current research and forthcoming book examine gentrification and race in a smal city through the lens of racial capitalism. My overall research and teaching interests include urban and cultural sociology, community studies, work and occupations, and research methods (especially qualitative methods). Finally, I am a podcast host of the Sociology channel on the New Books Network.