New article in @bjsociology.bsky.social: "Twenty-first century butlers and the new spirit of service" (OA). Looking at the butlers that serve the wealthy today, I ask how they consent to conditions of work that many consider "servile" by modern standards. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Very happy to be a part of this special issue on “Hierarchies of Domesticity – Spatial and Social Boundaries", which is out now in @wolgjournal.bsky.social! www.scienceopen.com/journal-issu...

Feeling very lucky to be able to give this talk at the University of Copenhagen tomorrow! www.sociology.ku.dk/about/calend...

Inauguration day reading…

Here are some of my favourite fieldnotes to illustrate one of these techniques … they show how butlers socially remove themselves from elites whilst remaining physically present; they may produce an elite lifestyle, but it is not theirs (10/18)

Curatorship, firstly, involves ‘the management of the employer’s class symbols’. A typical way that butlers do this is by laying the table according to a certain class etiquette, or otherwise helping their employer’s select the “best” wine for their meals. (6/18)

Mine and @dvandebroeck.bsky.social’s paper on ‘The Labor of Distinction’ is out now in ASR. Drawing from an ethnography that involved training and working as a butler, we tell a larger story about elites and inequality (1/18) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...