Katherine (Katie) Mott

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Katherine (Katie) Mott

Lecturer in Sociology

Department/Office Information

Sociology and Anthropology

Alumni Hall

M 11:30am - 2:30pm (420 Alumni Hall)

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Katie Mott is an ethnographer whose work examines the intersections of work and labor, food and the environment, and technology. Her work has been published in Qualitative Sociology and Research in the Sociology of Work. Her current research investigates how grocery stores' adoption of new technologies is reshaping retail work. Katie is preparing a book manuscript from this work that illuminates how the degradation of retail grocery customer service work -- in large part via the implementation of new technologies and the expansion of online retail logistics -- undercuts retail grocery workers' dignity and satisfaction.

Katie is a sociology PhD candidate at Syracuse University, where she also received an MS in Food Studies in 2017. She spent the first half of her twenties in the physical sciences realm working as an environmental engineer. Katie's teaching interests and areas of expertise include work and labor, urban sociology, food studies, sociological theory, and qualitative methods. To learn more about Katie and her work, check out her personal website.

BS, Environmental Engineering, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
MS, Food Studies, Syracuse University

Peer-reviewed journal articles
Mott, Katherine. Forthcoming. “Checked Out: Coping and Cashiering in Retail Grocery Work.” Research in the Sociology of Work, v. 38. Binkley, UK. Emerald Publishing.
- Winner of 2025 Harry Braverman Paper Award, Labor Studies Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems

Mott, Katherine. 2022. “Hurry up and wait”: Stigma, Poverty and Contractual Citizenship. Qualitative Sociology 45:271-290.
- Winner of 2021 Graduate Student Paper Competition, Sociology and Social Welfare Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems

Manuscripts in progress
Mott, Katherine. In Progress. Press to End Nightmare: The Degradation of Retail Grocery Customer Service Work.

Mott, Katherine. In Progress. “Raging against the broken machine: Workers’ experiences of planned obsolescence.”

Mott, Katherine and Amanda Beavin. In Progress. “Negotiating Strategy: Tenant Urgency and Activist Burnout in Syracuse, New York.”

Special issues
Mott, Katherine and Maegan Krajewski, eds. 2021. Special Issue on “Food as a Tool for Social Change.” Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development.

Book reviews
Mott, Katherine. 2021. Review of Feeding the Crisis: Care and Abandonment in America’s Social Safety Net by Maggie Dickinson (University of California Press, 2019) in Exertions (a web-based publication for the Society of Anthropology of Work Review).

OtherMott, Katherine. 2019. “Lotta Food, No Money”: Syracuse’s Poor Have Challenges that are Much Bigger than Food Access. Lerner Center Research Brief Series. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion.

Holt-Gimenez, Eric and Katherine Mott. 2016. Ground Shaking? Assessing the FAO’s 2015 International Year of Soils. Food First Backgrounder, Vol 22(1). Oakland, CA: Food First/The Institute for Food and Development Policy.