Waverly Duck is an urban ethnographer and holds the North Hall Chair as an Endowed Professor of Sociology. He is also the Associate Director of the Center for Black Studies Research at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2024, he will join the Russell Sage Foundation as an incoming Visiting Fellow.

Duck is the author of “No Way Out: Precarious Living in the Shadow of Poverty and Drug Dealing,” published by the University of Chicago Press in 2015. This significant work was a finalist for the Society for the Study of Social Problems’ C. Wright Mills Book Award in 2016.

He also co-authored “Tacit Racism” with Anne Rawls, which delves into unconscious racism. This influential book, also published by the University of Chicago Press, garnered several accolades in 2021 and 2022, including the Charles Horton Cooley Book Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction and an Honorable Mention for the Mary Douglas Book Prize from the American Sociological Association Culture Section. Furthermore, it won the 2022 Book Award from the North Central Sociological Association and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award from the American Sociological Association Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities. Notably, “Tacit Racism” is scheduled for release in France in 2024, extending its reach and impact.

His most recent collaborative work, “Black Lives Matter: Ethnomethodological and Conversation Analytic Studies of Race and Systemic Racism in Everyday Interaction,” co-authored with Anne Rawls and Kevin Whitehead, was published by Taylor and Francis in 2020. This book continues Duck’s exploration of the experiences of socially marginalized groups, with a particular focus on understanding the interaction order in marginalized communities, identifying problems they face, and exploring potential solutions.