I am committed to employing ethnographic methods in my research. My commitment to ethnography is as personal as it is intellectual. First, as a scholar and researcher, I think ethnography, with an intensive focus on generating in-depth understandings of people’s lived experiences, is the right method to study sociomateriality and culture. Second, as a human being, I am deeply passionate about ethnography as a way of understanding our very strange yet deeply human world. I find great satisfaction in connecting to and understanding human subjects.
Despite my relational approach in gaining access to the field site, I am also very good at maintaining a politically neutral image and “masking” my true political beliefs, which I have found very helpful when studying participants with political beliefs more conservative than mine. I am also good at seeing multiple perspectives in politics and avoiding any act of imposing my worldview on my participants.
My current research includes various sociological topics such as politics, culture, resilience, sociomateriality, relational mechanisms among immigrant rights advocates, emotional labor, and social reproduction. For my next research project, I am contemplating how cultural and spiritual values help workers stay resilient and thrive amidst political and economic turmoil.
UPCOMING PUBLICATIONS
Cao (upcoming, 2026). To the lighthouse: Moral injury, moral resilience, and moral courage. In Towards Greater Equality in Academia: A Collective Response. Edited by Scholz & Szulc. Edward Elgar Publishing. Gloucestershire. UK.
MANUSCRIPTS UNDER REVIEW
Cao. First, let’s eat cake: How sociomateriality supports resilience via bricolage behaviors. Under review at Human Relations as of February 2026.
MANUSCRIPTS IN PREPARATION
Cao & Wang. Do you know my son’s favorite food?: How emotional labor is shaped by embeddedness as local enactments of family discourse. To be submitted to Organization Studies in 2026.
Cao. The empathizers: Focusing on present impact as a relational mechanism among immigrant rights advocates. To be submitted to Human Relations in 2026.
Cao. Maybe don’t mention Harvard: Social reproduction processes in the translation of Bourdieu’s four forms of capital in Asian societies. To be submitted to Business and Society in 2026.