Dr. Jake Wilson, Professor

Photo Credit: Sean DuFrene

Email: jake.wilson@csulb.edu
Office: PSY-132
Phone: (562) 985-7379
Pronouns: he/him/his

Research Interests:

• Race, Racism, & Labor; Logistics, Ports, Warehouses & Supply Chains; Racialized Divisions in the Working-Class; Unions; Global Workers’ Struggles; E-commerce’s (Amazon’s) Impact on Work/Labor; The Gig Economy; Automation, Algorithmic Management & the Future of Work; Whiteness, Masculinities & Labor

Main Courses:

• Introduction to Sociology (Soc. 100)
• Environmental Sociology (Soc. 410)
• Long Beach Community Internship Program (LBCIP) (CLA 492)

Education:

• A.A., Mount San Antonio College
• B.S. (magna cum laude), Conservation & Resource Studies, UC Berkeley
• M.A., Ph.D., Sociology, UC Riverside

Overview: 

• Dr. Jake Alimahomed-Wilson’s research explores the ways that racism and labor exploitation intersect. He is particularly interested in the global logistics industry and the workers who move goods around the world. His current research examines the impact of e-commerce (i.e. Amazon) on work and labor.
• Dr. Wilson’s latest co-edited (with Ellen Reese) book, The Cost of Free Shipping: Amazon in the Global Economy, was released in 2020 by Pluto Press (Wildcat Series) is the winner of the 2021 Best Book Award, United Association for Labor Education (UALE). This book provides a rich and interdisciplinary collection of critical essays by scholars, activists, and labor and community organizers that interrogates the global significance of Amazon’s rise and the growing popular resistance to it around the world.  The Cost of Free Shipping will soon be published in Korean (Mobidic Communications, Seoul) and Italian (Altreconomia, Milan) editions.
• Dr. Wilson currently serves on the Executive Board (Full Professor Representative) for the California Faculty Association (Long Beach Chapter) and serves on the Advisory Committee of CSU Dominguez Hills’ Labor Studies Program and serves on the Advisory Board of the Los Angeles Trade-Tech College (LATTC) Labor Center.
• During the Spring 2018 semester, Dr. Wilson taught courses on “Global Workers” and “Environmental Sociology” to CSU students in London at University College London.
• Currently, Dr. Wilson serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of Work in the Global Economy and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Social Justice. In 2022, he co-edited (with Robert Ovetz) a special issue on Workers’ Movements and the Global Supply Chain for New Global Studies.

Books:

• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake and Ellen Reese (eds.). 2020. The Cost of Free Shipping: Amazon in the Global Economy. London, UK: Pluto Press. **Winner of the United Association for Labor Education (UALE) Best Book Award**
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake and Immanuel Ness (eds.). 2018. Choke Points: Logistics Workers Disrupting the Global Supply Chain. London, UK: Pluto Press.
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake. 2016. Solidarity Forever? Race, Gender, and Unionism in the Ports of Southern California. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
• Edna Bonacich and Jake B. Wilson. 2008. Getting the Goods: Ports, Labor, and the Logistics Revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Articles, book chapters, & other publications:

• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake and Ellen Reese. Forthcoming. “Surveilling Amazon’s Warehouse Workers: Racism, Retaliation, and Worker Resistance Amid the Pandemic,” in Race, Class, and Gender (12th Edition), edited by Paula Rothenberg and Christina Hsu Accomando. 
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake. 2023. “The E-logistics Revolution: Amazon, Labor and the Future of Logistics Work.” Platform Labor and Global Logistics: A Research Companion, edited by Immanuel Ness. Routledge.
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake. 2022. “Choke Points et lutte antiraciste.” Mouvements, 2(3): 26-35.
• Reese, Ellen and Jake Alimahomed-Wilson. 2022. “Teamsters Confront Amazon: An Initial Assessment.” New Labor Forum, 31(3): 43-51.
• Potiker, Spencer Louis, Dana M. Williams and Jake Alimahomed-Wilson. 2022. “Anarchist and Anarchistic Anti-Systemic Movements in World-Systems Perspective: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Non-State Spaces.” Journal of World Systems Research, 28(2): 188-218.
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake. 2022. “The World is a Warehouse: Racialised Labour Regimes and the Rise of Amazon’s Global Logistics Empire.” Labour Regimes and Global Production, edited by Neil Martin Coe, Elena Baglioni, Liam Campling, and Adrian Smith. Agenda Publishing.
• Ovetz Robert and Jake Alimahomed-Wilson. 2022. “Workers’ Movements and the Global Supply Chain.” New Global Studies, 16(1): 1-5.
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake and Ellen Reese. 2022. “Resisting Amazon Capitalism.” Global Labour Column, February 24. 
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake and Ellen Reese. 2021. “Surveilling Amazon’s Warehouse Workers: Racism, Retaliation, and Worker Resistance Amid the Pandemic.” Work in the Global Economy, 1(1-2): 55-73.
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake. 2021. “Racialized Masculinities and Global Logistics Labor.” Gendering Logistics: Feminist Approaches for the Analysis of Supply Chain Capitalism, edited by Carlotta Benvegnú, Niccolò Cuppini, Mattia Frapporti, Evelina Gambino, Floriano Milesi, Irene Peano, and Maurilio Pirone. Bologna: Dipartimento delle Arti, University of Bologna. 
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake. 2021. “La Révolution de la E-logistique: E-commerce, Travail et Retransformation de la Chaîne D’approvisionnement de la Californie du Sud.” Travail et Emploi.
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake. 2021. “La Amazonificación de la Logística: Comercio Electrónico, Trabajo y Explotación en la Última Milla.” Arxius De Ciències Socials, 43: 71-83. 
• Chua, Charmaine, Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and Spencer Louis Potiker. 2021. “Amazon’s Investments in Israel Reveal Complicity in Settlements and Military Operations.” The Nation, June 22.
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake (interview by Tatiana Cozzarelli and Maryam Alaniz). 2021. “Amazonification is the Future of Capitalism.” Left Voice, April 4.
• Alimahomed,-Wilson, Jake and Ellen Reese (interview by Jörn Boewe and Johannes Schulten). 2021. “Gespräch: Amazons Kometenhafter Aufstieg ist ein Schlüsselmoment im Globalen Kapitalismus.” Luxemburg Magazine: Social Analysis and Left Practice, March 21. 
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake. 2021. “A Day at the Office for an Amazon Driver.” LA Progressive, February 13. 
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake. 2021. “Surveillance, Stress, and No Bathrooms: Life as an Amazon Driver.” Labor Notes, February. 
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake. 2020. “Surprise! Amazon Squeezes its Drivers.” LA Progressive, December 19.
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake. 2020. “Building its Own Delivery Network, Amazon Puts the Squeeze on Drivers.” Labor Notes, December 17.
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake and Ellen Reese. 2020. “Its A Prime Day for Resistance to Amazon’s Ruthless Exploitation of Its Workers,” October 13. Jacobin. 
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake. 2020. “The Amazonification of Logistics: E-Commerce and the Struggle for the Last Mile.” The Cost of Free Shipping: Amazon in the Global Economy. London: Pluto Press.
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake. 2020. “Racialized Masculinities and Global Logistics Labor.” Into the Black Box: Research on Logistics, Spaces, & Labour. 
• Alimahomed-Jake, and Ellen Reese. 2020. “Amazon Capitalism: How COVID-19 and Racism Made the World’s Most Powerful Corporation.” Pluto Press. 
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake. 2019. “Unfree Shipping: The Racialisation of Logistics Labour.” Work Organization, Labour, & Globalisation, 13(1): 96-13. (WOLG Special Issue: Logistical Gazes – Spaces, Labour, & Struggles in Global Capitalism).
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake, Katy Fox-Hodess, and Kim Moody (interview by Chris Browne). 2018. “Seizing the Chokepoints.” Jacobin Magazine.
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake and Spencer Louis Potiker. 2018. “Decolonising Logistics: Palestinian Truckers on the Occupied Supply Chain.” Choke Points: Logistics Workers Disrupting the Global Supply Chain. London: Pluto Press.
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake and Spencer Louis Potiker. 2017. “The Logistics of Occupation: Israel’s Colonial Suppression of Palestine’s Goods Movement Infrastructure.” Journal of Labor and Society, (20)4: 427-447.
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake and Dana Williams. 2016. “State Violence, Social Control, and Resistance.” Journal of Social Justice, 6(1): 1-15.
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake. 2013. “Logistics Revolution (in shipping).” SAGE Sociology of Work Encyclopedia, edited by Vicki Smith and Geoffrey Golson.
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake. 2012. “Black Longshoremen and the Fight for Equality in an ‘Anti-Racist’ Union.” Race & Class, 53(4): 39-53.
• Bonacich, Edna and Jake Alimahomed-Wilson. 2012. “Headway for African American Workers in South Los Angeles.” In Post-Ghetto: Reimagining South Los Angeles, edited by Josh Sides. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Alimahomed-Wilson, Jake. 2011. “Men Along the Shore: Working-Class Masculinities in Crisis.” Nordic Journal for Masculinity Studies, 6(1): 22-44.
• Bonacich, Edna and Jake Alimahomed-Wilson. 2011. “Confronting Racism, Capitalism, and Ecological Degradation: Urban Farming and the Struggle for Social Justice in Black Los Angeles.” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture & Society, 13(2): 213-226.
• Alimahomed, Sabrina and Jake Alimahomed-Wilson. 2009. “Protest as Embodied State Practices: An Examination of Hegemonic and Counter-Hegemonic Protest Tactics.” Perspectives on Anarchist Theory. 
• Bonacich, Edna, Sabrina Alimahomed, and Jake B. Wilson. 2008. “The Racialization of Global Labor.” American Behavioral Scientist, 52 (3): 342-355.
• Wilson, Jake B. 2008. “The Racialized Picket Line: White Workers and Racism in the Southern California Supermarket Strike.” Critical Sociology, 34 (3): 349-367.
• Bonacich, Edna and Jake B. Wilson. 2005. “Hoisted by its Own Petard: Organizing Wal-Mart’s Logistics Workers.” New Labor Forum, 14 (Summer): 67-75.
• Bonacich, Edna and Jake Wilson. 2005. “Global Production and Distribution: Wal-Mart’s Global Logistics Empire.” In Wal-Mart World, edited by Stanley D. Brunn. Pp. 227-242. New York: Routledge.

Awards:

• 2022 FRA-EDI Award Initiative: “Long Beach Community Internship Program: Promoting Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.” Beth Manke and Jake Wilson. Office of Research and Economic Development, California State University, Long Beach.
• 2021 Best Book Award, United Association for Labor Education (UALE), The Cost of Free Shipping: Amazon in the Global Economy
• 2021 Climate Justice and Sustainability Fellow, California State University, Long Beach.
• 2020 Ukleja Center for Ethical Leadership’s Ethics Across the Curriculum Faculty Award. CSULB. 
• 2015-2016 Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award. California State University, Long Beach.
• 2015, 2019 Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), Mentorship Award. California State University, Long Beach.
• 2014 Most Inspiring Professor, CSULB Alumni Association. California State University, Long Beach.
• 2013 Enhancing Education Through Technology (3ET) Award, Flipping the Classroom Stipend. California State University, Long Beach.
• 2013 Faculty Mentoring Award, Educational Opportunity Program (EOP). California State University, Long Beach.
• 2012 Labor Ignites Featured Scholar. The Dolores Huerta Labor Institute. Los Angeles Community College.