Visiting scholar Steve Vallas will give a workshop for graduate students called "Qualitative methods in the study of work."

This semester we are kicking off our UEL affiliated faculty "office hours" series! Please join Professor Gloria González-López for drop-in office hours in the ethnography lab to discuss any and all questions related to theory and methods.

The Potlatch Revisited: Doing Display among the New Global Elite

How does conspicuous consumption unfold in situations? This talk challenges the interpretation of conspicuous consumption as a static feature of elites by developing an interactional approach to explain pecuniary display as situated collective accomplishment. Drawing from a multi-sited ethnography conducted in the global VIP party circuit from New York and Miami to Cannes, I show how nightclubs mobilize elites into conspicuous consumers with staged spending rituals akin to the potlatch in economic anthropology.

Ashley Mears is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Boston University. Her research, at the intersection of cultural and economic sociology and gender studies, documents processes of valuation and evaluation primarily in market settings, and how cultural logics of worth shape social inequalities. She received her PhD in Sociology from New York University.

Professor Ashley Mears will be visiting Harel Shapira's class on ethnographic methods. Open to any students who have previously taken the course. Please email Harel in advance if you plan on attending.

Our second visiting scholar for the Critical Criminology Speaker Series, Cecilia Menjivar, will facilitate a workshop for graduate students.