Navigating Power, Vulnerability, and Emotional Labor in the Midwest: Autoethnography as Possibility and Limit

My aim in this paper is to introduce a theory of affective labor as byproductive, a concept I develop through analysis of the phenomenology of various affective labor practices in dialog with feminist scholarship, both on gendered and racialized labor, and on affect and emotion. I motivate my theory in the context of literature on affective and emotional labor in philosophy and the social sciences, engaging the post-Marxist literature on affective and immaterial labor and emphasizing feminist critiques. I argue that affective labor is not only the work of producing affects for others to consume or the reproductive work that rejuvenates and sustains labor power and social life, but also the work of metabolizing waste affects and affective byproducts. Thus, byproductive labor is a neologism I develop to bring into view an affective economy and indeed a political economy of affects to the side of the distinction between productive and reproductive labor in its paid and unpaid variants. I make three central claims: (1) affective labor invariably creates byproducts in the embodied subjectivity of the worker; (2) the unique kind of affective expenditure I call “byproductive” (metabolizing affective surplus, containing affective waste, and producing depleted affective agency) is a defining feature of affective labor not circumscribed by the productive–reproductive distinction; and (3) the marginalized forms of subjectivity and depleted agency constituted through the intersections of this labor with hierarchies of gender, race, and migrant status or global class are themselves byproducts of affective labor. Thus, theorizing affective labor as byproductive captures the uniqueness of affective labor and the forms of exploitation unique to it, but also explains the interaction of affective labor with forms of power that operate through subjection and marginalization.

ABSTRACTThis article studies rural migrant women working in the Shanghai beauty parlour industry, focusing on how this industry emphasises affective labour and articulates it along lines of migration, gender and seniority. The analysis looks at three types of female beauty workers: apprentices, senior beauticians, and entrepreneurs. Bringing together Hardt and Negri’s (2004) theorisation of affective labour and Yang Jie’s (2011) notion of aesthetic labour, this article investigates how the affective and aesthetic labour demanded from these migrant women affects their minds and bodies, and their position and value in the marriage market. On the basis of fieldwork conducted in Shanghai, the article begins by exploring the ways in which the demand of Shanghai beauty parlour industry for affective labour impacts the ability of rural migrant women to enter into other forms of affective relationships. It goes on to argue that affective labour in this industry is not wholly negative, but modifies bodies and minds in ways that can be both oppressive and enabling, depending on, among other things, the beauty worker’s level of seniority. Finally, the article proposes that, in the beauty parlour industry, there is a reciprocality with affective labour that includes the workers as well as the clients.

Given the significant costs and customer service ramifications associated with the return of retail merchandise it is important to understand the underlying reasons for product returns. One such underlying reason is cognitive dissonance. Customers who experience cognitive dissonance may seek to undo the effects of a regretted choice by returning the product in question. This research examines the influence of two forms of cognitive dissonance (emotional dissonance and product dissonance) on the frequency of product returns. Three antecedents (consideration of liberal return policies, customer opportunism, and switching barriers) are examined in terms of their influence on cognitive dissonance and product returns. In addition, the moderating role of gender and store brand is reported. The research is based on a survey of Wal-Mart and Target customers who engaged in product returns. Structural equation modeling is used to verify and test these relationships. Emotional dissonance and product dissonance were found to be positively related to product returns frequency. It was found that consideration of liberal return policies reduces both emotional and product dissonance, while customer opportunism and switching barriers increase both dimensions of cognitive dissonance. Both gender and store brand were found to be significant moderators of the relationships between cognitive dissonance and two antecedents (consideration of liberal return policies and customer opportunism). In addition, gender and store brand moderated the linkage between product dissonance and emotional dissonance, and the linkage between emotional dissonance and return frequency.

The study focuses on the counter staff of the extracurricular education industry in the Greater Taichung region to examine how their job satisfaction influences the enrolment rate of the cram schools. In addition, the study also attempts to determine the influence of the counter staff's emotional labor on job satisfaction, while sense of humor is used as the extraneous variable. The survey questionnaire method is used as a quantitative analysis, and the qualitative method is employed to study the correlation between sense of humor, job satisfaction, and work performance. The quantitative data statistical analysis is conducted through the SPSS17.0 suite. The study reveals that emotional labor and sense of humor are influential parameters of job satisfaction, they are also correlated. Furthermore, through regression analysis, the result reveals that the comprehension of humor has an alleviating effect on emotional work labor. It also reduces the level of dissatisfaction towards work. The study proves that the job satisfaction of counter staff is influenced by emotional labor and sense of humor. It allows the extracurricular education industry to understand the emotions of the counter staff, to place more emphasis on creating a humorous ambiance at work, and to enhance the job satisfaction of the counter staff. The objective is to effectively boost the enrolment rate of cram schools and to provide the management with a reference.

This exploratory study examines the roles journalists rely on when covering social justice topics and what these role conceptions reveal about emotion and self expression values in news production. This article builds on Herbert Gans’ definition of what news is, discursive understandings of journalistic performance, and emotion in news to understand and operationalize journalists’ understandings of how their roles and reporting practices shape news coverage of social justice topics. Findings from qualitative interviews with journalists suggest that journalists that cover social justice topics seek to guide, motivate, and inspire audiences by utilizing emotion in the stories they choose to cover. Interview data shows that emotion and emotional labor are important components of the production of social justice news. This article adds to theoretical and practical understandings of how journalists who cover social justice topics discursively construct their professional roles, and how emotions contribute to a contemporary understanding of journalism and news.

A Review of: Galoozis, E. (2019). Affective aspects of instruction librarians’ decisions to adopt new teaching practices: Laying the groundwork for incremental change. College & Research Libraries, 80(7), 1036–1050. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.80.7.1036 Abstract Objective – To investigate the correlation between emotional and affective labour and instruction librarians’ willingness to adopt and implement novel teaching and educational practices. Design – Semi-structured interview, grounded theory. Setting – Academic libraries in the Greater Western Library Alliance consortium. Subjects – 12 information literacy librarians from the Greater Western Library Alliance consortium of 38 research libraries from the US. Methods – In 2016, the author shared a call for study participants in the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) consortium, selected a convenience sample of 12 information literacy instruction (ILI) librarians, and conducted a structured interview over Adobe Connect, a virtual video-interviewing tool. Interview transcripts underwent initial thematic coding using a grounded theory approach. Additionally, the author used Walker and Symons’ theories of motivation to code interview responses related to emotional and affective labour. Main Results – The author identified three thematic categories in the interview transcripts: barriers and influences for adopting new teaching practices, and practices implemented by ILI librarians. The author mapped these response themes to Walker and Symons’ (1997) conditions of human motivation: autonomy, competency, feedback, affirmation, and setting meaningful goals. Some major barriers to adopting new teaching practices are burnout and emotional exhaustion due to understaffing, time demands, the sheer quantity of instruction sessions, and the lack of post-instruction feedback to reinforce pedagogical decisions. A sense of competency, autonomy, and support when designing library instruction sessions encourages librarians to adopt new teaching practices. The author explored what practices ILI librarians applied to implement new teaching practices. Having plenty of time to prepare prior to an instruction session encourages ILI librarians to build new teaching practices into sessions. The respondents noted that building relationships with faculty, students, and library colleagues enables them to receive helpful feedback. Conclusion – Though there is some correlation between affective and emotional labour and the motivation of ILI librarians to adopt and implement new teaching practices, the author notes that the results are not generalizable to a larger context based on the small sample size. It is clear there are many opportunities to investigate other factors that impact librarian motivation and emotional labour including the dynamics of race, gender identity, and disability, or the managerial and structural factors and workplace culture that impede or facilitate the adoption of new teaching practices.

This article investigates the empirical case of commercial mom blogging as indicative of the particular ways in which the digital economy invites and exploits women’s affective and emotional labour. Based on Finnish mom bloggers’ interviews, the article explores the ways in which emotional labour is needed to tackle the mean and degrading comments that most bloggers have to come to terms with, and the ways in which their affective involvement is an inseparable part of their work as mom bloggers. Looking at vulnerability, control and emotional resilience as sites of emotional and affective labour in blogging, the article shows how gendered and embodied burdens are carried on to the digital realm, and how new vulnerabilities and forms of affective labour are formed and normalized.

In this paper, we build on Wood’s (2010, 2012) recent call to consider higher education as a work place that conjures emotion among constituents, particularly positional leaders, like department chairs. Using a participatory action research and photo - enhanced methodological approach, we illustrate the emotional labor that was poured into the work of one department chair. Consequently, our work yields three contributions. First, we counter the overly rationalistic depiction of organizational leadership research and thinking. Second, our work suggests that if we conceptualize and understand emotion and emotional labor as a form of labor compelled by organizational norms, rule s, and relationships, it becomes possible to consider how institutions can and should better acknowledge this aspect of labor and how it can support individuals in these facets of work life (Brief & Weiss, 2002; Fisk & Friesen, 2012). Finally, we show how non - mainstream methodologies can help researchers explore multidimensional and understudied topics, like emotion and emotional labor, in studies of higher education.

This exploratory study examines the roles journalists rely on when covering social justice topics and what these role conceptions reveal about emotion and self expression values in news production. This article builds on Herbert Gans’ definition of what news is, discursive understandings of journalistic performance, and emotion in news to understand and operationalize journalists’ understandings of how their roles and reporting practices shape news coverage of social justice topics. Findings from qualitative interviews with journalists suggest that journalists that cover social justice topics seek to guide, motivate, and inspire audiences by utilizing emotion in the stories they choose to cover. Interview data shows that emotion and emotional labor are important components of the production of social justice news. This article adds to theoretical and practical understandings of how journalists who cover social justice topics discursively construct their professional roles, and how emotions contribute to a contemporary understanding of journalism and news.

This article investigates the game video creators’ playbour on Bilibili, a leading Chinese user-generated content platform with a focus on animation, comics and games. The creators’ labour involves creating content through affective labour and managing the fan communities through emotional labour, situated in a network production model. Current studies of platformed playbour either interchangeably use affective and emotional labour or rarely discuss the interplay between the two concepts. We argue that it is important to recognize their nuance and investigate their relationship. Our research clarifies the difference between affective labour and emotional labour and discovers the conflict between the two types of labour. We argue that the conflict derives from enhanced alienation of leisure activities caused by platformization of playbour. Although the video creators consider strategies to solve conflicts, they can barely escape from the unequal labour relationship, constructed by the platform. This study involves semi-structured interviews with 13 playworkers, one Bilibili employee and three advertisers. The playworkers’ Bilibili channels were also observed online from 2019 to 2020.

The purpose of this study was to determine the mediating effect of self-regulation on relationships between preschool teachers’ emotional labor and turnover intention. To this end, this study raised the following research questions. First, what are the tendencies in emotional labor, turnover intention and self-regulation that preschool teachers show? Second, what are the relationships between preschool teachers’ emotional labor, turnover intention and self-regulation? Third, what is the mediating effect of self-regulation on the relationships between preschool teachers’ emotional labor and turnover intention? Thus, this study gave a questionnaire survey to 266 teachers serving at preschools located in Busan and Ulsan to determine their emotional labor, turnover intention and self-regulation. Data collected from the survey were processed using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and mediated regression analysis. The findings of this study can be summarized as follows. Above all, preschool teachers are higher than average in tendency towards emotional labor or self-regulation, but lower than average in tendency towards turnover intention. Next, as far as relationships between the variables are concerned, negative correlations exist between preschool teachers’ emotional labor and turnover intention and between their self-regulation and turnover intention, while positive correlations exist between the teachers’ emotional labor and self-regulation. In addition, self-regulation has a full effect of mediating relationships between preschool teachers’ emotional labor and turnover intention. All of these findings are significant in that they provide basic information that may be useful to set up a way of reducing preschool teachers’ turnover rate and to improve the self-regulation of those teachers who often face emotional labor.

Korean Emotional Laborers' Job Stressors and Relievers: Focus on Work Conditions and Emotional Labor Properties

PurposeGuided by Habermas’s three cognitive interests, this paper reviews the studies on school leaders’ emotional labor. It seeks to provide a typology of how researchers inquire about school leaders’ emotional labor by focusing on different understandings, topics and characteristics.Design/methodology/approachThis is a narrative review with 38 studies finally selected for analysis. Guided by Habermas’s three cognitive interests, all the studies were examined carefully and were found to fall into different clusters of understanding of school leaders’ emotional labor.FindingsThe review revealed three understandings of school leaders’ emotional labor, namely instrumental understanding, practical understanding and emancipatory understanding. The instrumental understanding treats school leaders’ emotional labor as a tool to effectively control the schools; the practical understanding regards emotional labor as a way to build and maintain relationships and as the process of meaning-making; the emancipatory understanding perceives emotional labor as a site for school leaders’ reflection and action for achieving a more just and self-determined leadership.Originality/valueThis review contributes to the growing literature on school leadership and emotional labor by providing a theory-guided typology and synthesis of the existing understanding of school leaders’ emotional labor, which lays a knowledge base and points out directions for future scholarly inquiries. It also provides practical suggestions for educational policy, school leaders’ practice and leadership training.

Emotional labour occurs when employees manage their emotions during service interactions in line with particular organisational display rules. ‘Service with a smile’ is an example of such a role requirement which can lead to the overall organisational success as showing positive emotions influence customers’ intention to return and positive reviews. This makes emotional labour a crucial element in the service sector including in the context of tour operators. The focus of this thesis is the UK tour operating industry and specifically, the package holiday market where research and the understanding of emotional labour is still limited. This study thus addresses this gap by researching the holiday representatives. At the same time, the way in which employees engage in emotional labour is influenced by various factors, which however, are still poorly understood. Therefore, this gap is also addressed through the aim of this study by expanding the knowledge on how various workplace factors influence holiday representatives’ emotional labour. The empirical data was collected using semi-structured interviews with participants working as overseas holiday representatives for British tour operators. Rich data was obtained regarding their emotional labour experiences and their opinions on how various influences had a role in shaping these. Snowball sampling, snowball sampling using social networking sites such as LinkedIn, and self-selection sampling were used to recruit the participants. Data was further analysed by adopting a thematic analysis using MAXQDA. The findings revealed that emotional labour in this role is multi-faceted which occurs not only with customers, but also with other parties in the workplace such as colleagues, managers and suppliers. Also, the workplace and its various components are the most influential factors for the holiday representatives’ emotional labour. These influences are often overlooked by organisations, but are crucially important for holiday representatives and their behaviour. A new framework for the influences in this context has been developed which divided these in work-environment influences with context-specific factors, customer related influences, and individual influences. This research contributes towards a more holistic view of emotional labour by providing a stakeholder approach towards its understanding, by considering all emotion regulation strategies such as surface acting, deep acting, natural felt emotions and emotional deviance and by considering both positive and negative workplace events as influences. It also introduces the concepts of ‘concomitant emotional labour’ and ‘variable emotional labour’ in the context of holiday representatives. This study also has implications to methodology by adopting a qualitative approach. Future research should focus on a more holistic approach in understanding emotional labour and build on the framework of influences developed in this thesis.

Aims: This scoping review aims to examine the level and outcomes of emotional labor in nurses. Background: Nursing is a highly emotional profession that requires nurses to experience a wide range of emotions and control their emotional expressions in nursing practice. Chronic emotional labor and emotional burden not only impact nurses' individual well-being and professional performance but also their job satisfaction and turnover intention. Evaluation: This scoping review was guided by a five-stage scoping review framework and the PRISMA-ScR checklist. Eight databases were searched and 41 studies were reviewed. Key Issues: The Emotional Labor Scale and the Emotional Labor Scale for Nurses were the most commonly used instruments. Significant associations were found between emotional labor and 52 outcomes, which were categorized into two main themes: nurses' personal well-being and organizational well-being. There were 19 mediators and 12 moderators between nurses' emotional labor and 26 different outcomes. Conclusions: While the level of emotional labor among nurses remains uncertain, its consequences are plentiful and intricate. Studies have shown an important relationship between nurses' emotional labor and individual and organizational well-being, which is crucial for nurse managers. There is a need to explore the positive effects of nurses' emotional labor and its impact on patients. Additionally, validation studies of the instruments used to measure nurses' emotional labor are necessary. Implications for Nursing Management: The insights gained from this scoping review provided a more comprehensive understanding of emotional labor for nurse managers. This knowledge can be utilized to design training programs on emotional management and to explore different interventions aimed at alleviating the adverse impacts of nurses' emotional labor.