David Grazian is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Prof. Grazian received his B.A. from Rutgers University in 1994, and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2000. He teaches courses on popular culture, mass media and the arts; cities and urban sociology; social interaction and public behavior; and ethnographic methods. In his research he employs a variety of ethnographic and other qualitative methods to study the production and consumption of commercial entertainment in the urban milieu. He is the author of four books: Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs (Univ. Chicago Press, 2003), On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife (Univ. Chicago Press, 2008), Mix It Up: Popular Culture, Mass Media, and Society (W.W. Norton, 2010), and American Zoo: A Sociological Safari (Princeton Univ. Press, 2015).

Event Abstract:
While coworking spaces like WeWork brand themselves as bastions of collaboration and community in the digital economy, such workplaces tend to replicate the vast racial, gender, and socioeconomic inequalities rampant in the technology industry more generally. Drawing on a comparative ethnographic study of coworking environments in Manhattan, I first highlight how these social cleavages are reflected in the spatial and symbolic logic of coworking spaces in New York City. Then, as a counterexample, I draw on fieldwork conducted at a Harlem WeWork location to show how urban structural forces, local nonprofit organizations, and microsocial interactions have the potential to generate both community and cosmopolitanism in multiracial neighborhoods otherwise underserved in the new economy.