As workers attempt new modes of employment in the era of the Great Resignation, they face a labor landscape that is increasingly uncertain and stubbornly unequal. With Handcrafted Careers, sociologist Eli Revelle Yano Wilson dives headfirst into the everyday lives of workers in the craft beer industry to address key questions facing American workers today: about what makes a good career, who gets to have one, and how careers progress without established models.
Eli Revelle Yano Wilson is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico. His writing and research explores how work, race, and culture intersect in the new economy. He lives and makes a home in both Albuquerque, New Mexico and Ojai, California.
What inspired you to write this book?
I’ve always been fascinated by types of work that seem to inspire utter devotion or complete absorption from the people who do them. Jobs that are about so much more than labor tasks and paychecks and become core sources of identities and pleasures for many. I also knew from my own work history that the craft beer industry definitely fits this description.
What I didn’t expect to find, upon embarking on this research, was all the complexity lying just underneath this narrative. I met workers in this industry who were grappling with unspoken assumptions about who belonged in craft beer, trying to figure out what really counted as expertise or credentials valued by their colleagues, and attempting to reconcile their passions for craft beer with a future of marginal wages and employment uncertainties. The utter messiness of this work—but also its relatability to what many others experience in their work lives—is what inspired me to write this book.
What did you learn and what are you hoping readers will learn from your book?
I think that depends on what kind of reader you are! I hope the stories of the charismatic, hard-working, quirky, and sometimes craft-obsessed personalities that fill this book stay with readers and give them new perspective on this industry. These individuals are truly the embodiment of craft beer’s values and aspirational qualities that the public doesn’t always get to see.
From a more theoretical angle, readers will gain a fresh understanding of the subtle and cumulative forces that allow more socially-privileged workers to advance ahead of their colleagues from marginalized backgrounds. How this occurs in a new kind of industry—one that rejects stiff-lipped procedures and corporate hierarchies and generally favors socially-progressive values—is a key contribution of this book. Moreover, aspects of craft beer culture also enable some underrepresented workers, such as women and people of color, to express themselves and their companies in distinctive ways. In a setting dominated by bearded white guys, standing out from the crowd can be a source of edginess and authenticity. But it can also mean getting left out of key networks, making job advancement that much harder.
Can you give us a specific example?
Sure. “Bearded white guys” are able to assume roles of creative authority in craft breweries not because of their formal credentials but because they embody the values, lifestyles, and ideas about work that the industry cherishes. They demonstrate their pure passion for craft beer in ways that are infused with race, class, and gender privilege, such as by purchasing rare and expensive beers to bring into work and stay after hours to taste with their colleagues. This makes it difficult for someone without the right assemblage of social and cultural characteristics to be seen as the right “fit” in this environment—especially over time.
On the other hand, the exceptions are just as interesting as the rule. People like Esteban, who is a brown-skinned, working-class, Latino man, are forging alternate paths forward in craft beer—albeit highly unpredictable and idiosyncratic ones. By subverting industry norms (he films himself chugging coveted beers instead of sipping them) while asserting a self-described “gangster” persona, Esteban has gained enough of a social media following to crowdsource the funds he needed to start a small brewery.
What was the process of writing your book like?
Writing this book was a truly immersive experience. I was constantly writing in breweries, often with a pint of craft beer next to my computer. Every so often I would pause to chat with the people who worked there or drank there or both. Samples of newly kegged beer would appear in front of me or I would be led away for an impromptu tour of a cold box or barrel room. I learned to go with the flow. Stories about working in craft beer would eventually make their way onto the page while new ones were being made right there!