Handcrafted Careers: Racialized, Classed, and Gendered Job Pathways in the U.S. Craft Beer Industry

• In Event: 3147 - Intersections of Race, Gender, and Class in School, Work, and the Home

Abstract

In an era of profound job uncertainty and persistent social inequality in the labor market, how do individual work careers develop, and what might these careers tell us about the forces contributing to employment inequality today? This study draws on evidence from the rapidly-growing U.S. “craft” beer industry to examine how workers navigate industry structures as they approach, enter, and move between jobs. I argue that key career pathway transitions that workers engage in are racialized, classed, and gendered, such that people with different socioeconomic and cultural resources are steered into divergent categories of employment. Specifically, white educated men draw on gendered network ties and classed tastes to buffer their access into creative jobs. By contrast, women and working-class minorities find themselves channeled into non-creative, service or manual labor positions. By connecting individual worker outlooks to industry structures, I discuss how studying work careers through institutional fields contributes to theory on social inequality in the contemporary labor market.

Author

• Eli R. Wilson, University of New Mexico-Albuquerque