Work in all its guises is a fundamental part of the human experience, and yet it is a setting where emotions rarely take centre stage. This edited collection interrogates the troubled relationship between emotion and work to shed light on the feelings and meanings of both paid and unpaid labour from the late 19th to the 21st century. Central to this book is a reappraisal of ‘emotional labour’, now associated with the household and ‘life admin’ work largely undertaken by women and which reflects and perpetuates gender inequalities. Critiquing this term, and the history of how work has made us feel, Feelings and Work in Modern History explores the changing values we have ascribed to our labour, examines the methods deployed by workplaces to manage or ‘administrate’ our emotions, and traces feelings through 19th, 20th and 21st century Europe, Asia and South America. Exploring the damages wrought to physical and emotional health by certain workplaces and practices, critiquing the pathologisation of some emotional responses to work, and acknowledging the joy and meaning people derive from their labour, this book appraises the notion of ‘work-life balance’, explores the changing notions of professionalism and critically engages with the history of capitalism and neo-liberalism. In doing so, it interrogates the lasting impact of some of these histories on the current and future emotional landscape of labour.
Work in all its guises is a fundamental part of the human experience, and yet it is a setting where emotions rarely take centre stage. This edited collection interrogates the troubled relationship between emotion and work to shed light on the feelings and meanings of both paid and unpaid labour from the late 19th to the 21st century. Central to this book is a reappraisal of ‘emotional labour’, now associated with the household and ‘life admin’ work largely undertaken by women and which reflects and perpetuates gender inequalities. Critiquing this term, and the history of how work has made us feel, Feelings and Work in Modern History explores the changing values we have ascribed to our labour, examines the methods deployed by workplaces to manage or ‘administrate’ our emotions, and traces feelings through 19th, 20th and 21st century Europe, Asia and South America. Exploring the damages wrought to physical and emotional health by certain workplaces and practices, critiquing the pathologisation of some emotional responses to work, and acknowledging the joy and meaning people derive from their labour, this book appraises the notion of ‘work-life balance’, explores the changing notions of professionalism and critically engages with the history of capitalism and neo-liberalism. In doing so, it interrogates the lasting impact of some of these histories on the current and future emotional landscape of labour.
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction, Agnes Arnold-Forster and Alison Moulds
Part I: Spaces of Labour
2. Emotions and Sexuality at Work: Lyon’s Corner Houses, c.1920-50,
Grace Whorrall-Campbell
3. Shop Assistants, ‘Living-In’, and Emotional Health, 1880s-1930s,
Alison Moulds
4. The Emotional Landscape of the Hospital Residence in Post-war
Britain, Agnes Arnold-Forster
5. Negotiating Deindustrialization: Emotions and Ahmedabad’s
Textile Workers, Rukmini Barua
Part II: Professional and Personal Identities
6. Education, Work, and Self-Worth in Women’s Letters to Soviet
Authorities, 1924-32, Hannah Parker
7. Money, Emotions, and Domestic Service in Buenos Aires, 1950-70,
Inés Pérez
8. Managing Feeling in the Academic Workplace: Gender, Emotion and
Knowledge Production in a Cambridge Science Department, 1950-80,
Sally Horrocks and Paul Merchant
9. Control your Feelings and be a Leader: Representations of Women,
Emotions, and Career in Brazilian Media, Tatiane Leal
Part III: Emotions, Politics and Power
10. ‘Violent Emotions’: Canine Suffering, Emotional Communities,
and the Emotionally-Charged Work of (Anti)Vivisection in London,
New York, and Paris, Chris Pearson
11. Whistleblowing, Guilt, and Liberal Democracy, James Brown
12. The ‘System’ of Service: Emotional Labour and the Theatrical
Metaphor, Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal
13. Emotional Labour and the Childcare Crisis in Neoliberal
Britain, Claire English
Afterword by Claire Langhamer
Index
A collection that interrogates the vexed relationship between emotions and work in modern history to shed new light on the feelings and meaning of labour from the late 19th to the 21st century.
Agnes Arnold-Forster is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the
Social Studies of Medicine Department at McGill University, Canada.
She is a medical and cultural historian of modern Britain with
expertise in the history of healthcare, labour, and the emotions.
Her first book, The Cancer Problem, was published in January
2021.
Alison Moulds is an independent scholar specializing in medical
and cultural history and literary studies. She was Engagement
Fellow on the Surgery & Emotion project (University of Roehampton,
UK) and Postdoctoral Researcher on the Diseases of Modern Life
project (University of Oxford, UK). Her first book, Medical
Identities and Print Culture, c.1830s-1910s was published in
2021.
This collection makes a critical contribution to the study of work
and emotions, highlighting how emotion work shapes—and is shaped
by—workers, workplaces, and systems of inequality.
*CHOICE*
This timely book probes not only how people have felt about work
and at work, but also why they felt the ways they did. An important
update on Hochschild’s Managed Heart, it digs into the politics of
emotional labour, making a significant revision to the history of
work. Essential reading.
*Rob Boddice, Senior Research Fellow at HEX, Tampere University,
Finland*
Working life gives rise to many different emotions – from boredom
and status anxiety to joy and fulfilment – as well as providing
opportunities for friendship, camaraderie, and romance. This
accomplished and wide-ranging collection asks searching questions
about how work has made people feel since the late nineteenth
century. It takes the study of this topic to a new level.
*Thomas Dixon, Professor of History, Queen Mary University of
London, UK*
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