Ellen Meiser, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Assistant Professor Meiser’s research areas are in food studies and the restaurant business, notably on violence and abuse in the workplace.
Posted July 10, 2024, updated Oct. 2024 with date of book publication.
Ellen Meiser is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. Her areas of research are in food studies and the culinary field.
“Most of my work surrounds the lives of kitchen workers, like chefs and cooks,” says Meiser. “However, I have one foot out of the kitchen and am venturing into the new fields of medical sociology and gender.”
Meiser received her bachelor of arts in hospitality business management (2011) from the University of Alaska, Anchorage, and her master of arts in Asian studies (2016) and doctor of philosophy in sociology (2021) from UH Mānoa. She arrived at UH Hilo in August of 2022.
Meiser is well-published and best known in the field of sociology for her research about violence and abuse in restaurants, particularly through her published paper on the role of food media in normalizing violence.
- Paper: The Normalization of Violence in Commercial Kitchens Through Food Media (Sage Journals, April 2021)
- See also, paper: Avoiding, Resisting and Enduring: A New Typology of Worker Responses to Workplace Violence (Sage Journals, April 2023)
- Column: How did abuse get baked into the restaurant industry? (The Conversation, May 2023)
“Violence and abuse is so common in restaurant kitchens that it is almost mundane,” says Meiser. “People tend to be shocked by how prevalent and ‘colorful’ these cases are and seem to have an unending appetite to read about this, but the reality is that it is the unfortunate norm in the industry.”
Book: Making It
Based on her doctoral dissertation, Meiser has published the book, Making It: Success in the Commercial Kitchen (Rutgers Press, Oct. 2024), where she discusses that despite the current buzz about culinary school being a waste of time and money, many graduates from these institutions actually feel their experiences were worth the cost.
Starting with the premise that the restaurant industry is one of the few places in America where workers from lower-class backgrounds can rise to positions of power and prestige, the author notes that with over 4,000,000 cooks and food-preparation workers employed in America’s restaurants, not everyone makes it to the high-status position of chef. The book investigates the factors that determine who rises in the ranks in this fiercely competitive environment.
Meiser posits that the career path of restaurant workers depends on their accumulation of “kitchen capital,” a cultural asset based not only on their ability to cook but also on how well they can fit into the workplace culture and negotiate its hierarchical structures.
She came to this discovery by immersing herself in the topic, spending 120 hours working in a restaurant kitchen and interviewing 50 chefs and cooks from fine-dining establishments and greasy-spoon diners across the country. She discovers that for some workers their clout comes from education and the resulting expertise, but for others it’s all about climbing the ranks, controlling their emotions, or exerting control over coworkers. The book takes a look at the interplay of knowledge, power, and interpersonal skills that determine who succeeds and who fails in the industry.
Podcast: The Social Breakdown
In 2017, Meiser co-created a podcast, The Social Breakdown (taglined “The sociology podcast nobody wants, but everybody needs”), still going strong with UH Mānoa sociology colleagues Penn Pantumsinchai and Omar Bird. The podcast has an average monthly listenership of more than 7,800 fans.
“We’ve been lucky to have a positive response from the podcast,” says Meiser. “Many professors around the states have picked it up and use it in their classrooms, which is cool!”
Meiser’s duties are to create, write copy, record, and edit the educational podcast that covers a variety of field-related topics. She also organizes the guest interviews, and promotes and markets the show to expand the audience base.
Community service
In addition to teaching sociology courses, Meiser also teaches courses cross-listed in the administration of justice program. In 2023, in a class combining the two programs, she organized a student-run research project on policing in East Hawaiʻi with funding from the East Hawaiʻi Cultural Center.
- See UH Hilo students conduct study on East Hawaiʻi policing, share findings at community forum attended by police chief and mayor (UH Hilo Stories, May 2023)
Students spent the first half of the semester learning about theories of crime (i.e., what are the social forces that influence people to commit crimes), and the second half was spent being introduced to the players of the criminal justice system (i.e., the police, offender, victim, prosecutors, public defenders, and judges). Meiser says the goal was for the students to better understand the roles of crime and the criminal justice system in our society.
“I’m looking for more opportunities to do community-based research with students like this in the near future,” she says.
Meiser also co-teaches a new multidisciplinary studies course at UH Hilo on kuleana (responsibility) and community; the course encourages students and instructors alike to strengthen their connections to UH Hilo, the community of Hilo, and Hawaiʻi Island as a whole.
In fall 2023, she co-taught the course with Makana Kushi from the gender and women’s studies program, taking the class on a huakaʻi (excursion) up Maunakea where they met with staff from the UH Hilo Center for Maunakea Stewardship. The group learned more about the mauna and its various climates, foliage, and cultural significance. The students also did service while visiting by helping build out the rock path denoting the walking trail along the visitor’s center.
“It ties into my teaching approach because huakaʻi like these and hands-on experiences are so integral in helping students connect what they learn from books and my lectures to the real world,” says Meiser. “I try to incorporate at least one huakaʻi into all of my upper division courses or guest speakers who can come in and bring their world to students.”
“I’m also a big proponent of hands-on activities,” she adds. “All of my courses use these on a weekly basis to drill down key ideas.”
Next on her plate: a new area of expertise coming up
Pivoting out of food studies and into medical sociology and gender, Meiser is working on securing a literary agent for her next book project, Congrats! You’ve Won the Cancer Lotto!, which she’s writing with her friend, classmate, and colleague from UH Mānoa, Nathalie Rita.
“Despite it being an academic study on young cancer patients and based on a year of in-depth interviews with 50 people, we are writing it as a pop sociology book and aim for it to be published at a trade press, so that it can reach a broader audience,” says Meiser.
Moving forward, she’d also like to do more creative writing in addition to her research work.
By Susan Enright, a public information specialist for the Office of the Chancellor and editor of Keaohou and UH Hilo Stories. She received her bachelor of arts in English and certificate in women’s studies from UH Hilo.
