Ethnographic Café
The Ethnographic Café is a place for ethnographers to meet across disciplines, generations, and countries. We gather to talk about all things ethnographic, from history, design, and method to analysis, writing and dissemination.
We meet monthly on Zoom to discuss a recently published ethnography with its author (see our schedule of events). We also convene periodically for special thematic sessions around a salient topic in the practice of ethnography.
We continue the online conversation through short photographic essays picturing the field, video interviews of ethnographers sharing the nitty-gritty of their fieldwork, reading recommendations contributed by the community, and through a directory that will help ethnographers with shared interests to find each other.
We aim to stimulate and support the work of a new generation of ethnographers, especially doctoral students, postdocs, and junior faculty, and we hope you will join us in this endeavor.
The Ethnographic Café Organizing Team:
Ashley Mears, Ekedi Mpondo-Dika, Loïc Wacquant, and Natalie Pasquinelli
Spring 2025 Schedule
03/28 Special Panel on the legacy of Michael Burawoy
04/18 Randol Contreras, The Marvelous Ones, in conversation with Ranita Ray
05/09 Special Panel on Gendered Risks in the Field
See the events here!
Friday, April 18, 2025 12-1:30 pm PT / 3-4:30pm ET
Randol Contreras in conversation with Ranita Ray
The Marvelous Ones: Drugs, Gang Violence, and Resistance in East Los Angeles
Zoom Meeting ID: 999 3910 8952
Password: 1234
Read excerpts from The Marvelous Ones here.
Randol Contreras acquired his Ph.D. from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of the multiple-award winning book, The Stickup Kids: Race, Drugs, Violence and the American Dream, which captures how the transformation of an illegal drug market in the South Bronx shaped and influenced drug dealers to become violent drug robbers. He has also done research in South Central, where he examined the ethnic conflicts between Mexicans and African Americans, especially in how residents interpret ethnic gangs.
His recent book entitled, The Marvelous Ones: Drugs, Gang Violence, and Resistance in East Los Angeles, was published by the University of California Press (April 2024). It is based on field research in East Los Angeles and documents how aging Mexican gang members struggle to matter in the world as they deal with the traumas of violence, substance abuse, and homelessness. A common theme in his work is the critical intersection of history, social structure, and biography, an intersection that sheds light on how criminal phenomena emerge and how they shape the behavior and meanings of people.
Ranita Ray is an ethnographer, author, and reluctant sociologist. Her work deals with teacher racism; K-12 schools as hostile institutions; gendered racial violence in education; social mobility and racialized poverty; and reproductive justice. Ray's 2018 book The Making of a Teenage Service Class: Poverty and Mobility in an American City recounts the three years she spent with 16 economically marginalized young Black and brown people to challenge common wisdom that focusing on "risk behaviors" such as drug use, gangs, violence, and teen parenthood is the key to ameliorating poverty in Black and brown communities. Her next book, Slow violence: Confronting Dark Truths in the American Classroom is an unflinching exposé of the American public education system’s indifference toward Black, brown, immigrant, queer, and economically marginalized children. Ranita is a vigilant ethnographer, cautious of its dark history and unpleasant pitfalls; nonetheless, she believes in its radical potential.