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human interaction her life’s work.
More specifically, she concentrates
on the ways in which social
and cultural factors condition
the experience and display of
emotions in capitalist society.
Her work charts the rise of the
service industries in North America
from the 1960s onward, and the
emergence of forms of employment
in which the emotions of workers
have become marketable
commodities sold for a wage:
“emotional labor,” as she calls it.
Hochschild says that her
interest in how people manage
emotions probably began when
she was growing up in a household
where her diplomat parents acted
as hosts to foreign embassy staff.
Where, she wondered, did the
person end and the act begin?
Later, as a graduate, she was
inspired by the chapter “The Great
Salesroom” in Wright Mills’ White
Collar, in which he argued that we
sell our personality when selling
goods and services.
Hochschild felt that this had the
ring of truth, but that it missed the
sense of the active emotional labor
involved in the selling. Unlike
19th-century factory work, where
output could be quantified and it
mattered little whether you loved or
hated what you made, employment
in a service industry is qualitatively
different. It means that “the
emotional style of offering the
service is part of the service itself,”
which makes it necessary for the
worker to sustain a certain outward
appearance in order to produce
a proper state of mind in others.
Whereas for Marx the individual
in the factory becomes alienated
from the products they create,
Hochschild argued that in the
service-based economy “the
product is a state of mind.”
In Hochschild’s view, the
increasing use of emotionally based
rather than manually based labor
has a greater impact on women
than men, because women are
conditioned since childhood to
supply feelings. But she believes
that this can come at a cost to
the individual, who may become
estranged from their own emotions,
which feel like they belong to their
work rather than to them.Managing interaction
One of the major influences
on Hochschild is symbolic
interactionist Erving Goffman. The
idea underpinning his work is thatselfhood is created during social
interaction. Only by interacting
with others—and managing the
way we present ourselves—are
individuals able to obtain a
personal sense of identity. In
essence, our innermost sense of
selfhood is inextricably bound up
with the social contexts in which
we are implicated.
Hochschild extends this
idea in a critical way by arguing
that emotions, as well as being
something external—residing in
interactions between individuals
and groups—are subject to self-
management too. Emotions and
feelings are also tied directly to
behavior and are experienced
by individuals as they prepare
to act and interact with others.
In a similar way to the sensory
faculty of hearing, “emotion
communicates information,”
as Hochschild puts it. She likens
emotion to what Freud referred ❯❯See also: Karl Marx 28–31 ■ G.H. Mead 176–77 ■ Erving Goffman 190–95 ■ Harry Braverman 226–31 ■
Christine Delphy 312–17 ■ Ann Oakley 318–19
WORK AND CONSUMERISM
Children are exposed to “childhood
training of the heart,” says Hochschild.
Whereas girls learn to be caring and to
master aggression and anger, boys
mask fear and vulnerability.