Richard E. Ocejo

Richard E. Ocejo is assistant professor of sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York (CUNY). His book, Upscaling Downtown: From Bowery Saloons to Cocktail Bars in New York City, about nightlife and conflict in gentrified neighborhoods, was published by Princeton University Press in 2014. Ocejo’s work has appeared in City & Community, Poetics, Ethnography, and the European Journal of Cultural Studies. He is also the editor of Ethnography and the City: Readings on Doing Urban Fieldwork (Routledge, 2012), a collection of readings on classic and contemporary works in urban ethnography, and a contributing editor to Metropolitics.

Ocejo is currently working on a monograph called In Cathedrals of Craft: The New Elite Retail, Manual Labor, and Service Jobs (working title, under contract; Princeton) about the upscaling of trades from low-status to “cool,” as well as a research methods textbook and website (under contract; Routledge). His overall research and teaching interests include urban and cultural sociology, community studies, work, and research methods (especially qualitative methods).