The People′s Hotel

“At Hotel Bauen, Katherine Sobering made beds, cleaned toilets, waited tables, swept floors, attended the reception desk day and night, and joined the workers who owned and ran the hotel in their many meetings as they attempted to build a more humane and just workplace. The result of this uniquely granular ethnography is an engaging and captivating narrative of a remarkable group of people who dared to dream that another world is possible—and fought tooth and nail for this collective project. There are many scholarly and political lessons packed in this extraordinary book.” - Javier Auyero, author of Patients of the State: The Politics of Waiting in Argentina

“Offering a fascinating window into organizing processes that most of us will never experience firsthand, Katherine Sobering draws on rich and extensive participant observation, interviews, and document analysis to delve into the efforts to tackle inequality through the organizing practices of a worker-recuperated business. This excellent study of contemporary collectivist-democratic organizing, labor, and inequality in Latin America has much to teach organizations and readers everywhere.” - Katherine K. Chen, author of Enabling Creative Chaos: The Organization behind the Burning Man Event

"Importantly, Sobering uncovers not only how democracy at work is possible and can be a key mechanism for building equality, but also various barriers that emerge in the process. . . . It is to Sobering’s great credit that she can uncover both the democratic potential and possible corrosive tendencies found within Hotel Bauen." - Manuel Larrabure, Mobilization

"Sobering’s study ... restores, through analysis, the subjective dynamics behind the decision to self-manage a workspace and the desire to transform it into a cooperative space that can serve as a contagion vector for the production of urban counterpower." - Vincenzo Maria Di Mino, Urban Studies

"Sobering’s The People’s Hotel is powerful, moving, and, I would argue, the best organizational ethnography to date on the inner workings of one of Argentina’s worker-recuperated companies. . . . Without doubt, The People’s Hotel is a landmark that serves to safeguard the legacy of the BAUEN workers and should become a much-cited study of organizational ethnography for years to come." - Marcelo Vieta, American Journal of Sociology

"Sobering’s beautifully written and engaging ethnography will appeal to a variety of readers, including labor historians, scholars of social movements, and anyone interested in the history of efforts to forge more just and democratic workplaces." - Jennifer A Adair, Journal of Social History