"I Know it Cuz' I Lived It": Valuation of "Embodied Expertise" and Reproduction of Workplace Inequality

• In Event: 20420 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 11: Ethnography

Abstract

Expertise and valuation in the workplace are stratifying processes; sociological literature illustrates how both structural and cultural processes contribute to differential outcomes in the workplace, beginning at the stage of interviewing and hiring, continuing onwards towards who is promoted, salaried, given a bonus, or fired. Traditional valuation processes and notions of expertise privilege workers with systemic racial, class, and gendered privileges, often harming historically marginalized workers. With the uptick in conversation around alternative forms of cultural capital, new forms of expertise are emerging as “valuable” in the workplace, often framed as a mechanism of promoting workplace equity and uplifting historically marginalized voices. This article seeks to understand the process and consequences of valuing “alternative” forms of expertise at the workplace, with a particular focus on “embodied expertise:” a credential denoting an individual’s expertise based on their lived experience of an issue, experience, or process. This article seeks to understand if valuing alternative forms of expertise – using “embodied expertise” as a case – serves to dismantle workplace inequalities and provide historically marginalized workers with further opportunities. Based on in-depth interviews and 9 months of ethnographic observation at a homelessness services organization, I find that this process of valuing “embodied expertise” does not simply provide marginalized workers with more opportunities – rather, it contributes to a work environment that fetishizes certain workers. This fetishization results in stratified outcomes for fellow co-workers and clients alike. Rather than promoting a culture of equality, intentionally valuing “embodied expertise” contributes to unforeseen workplace inequalities that negatively impact workers with “embodied expertise” and without it.

Author

• Chloe Jane Rosenstock, University of Wisconsin-Madison