Emotional Labor Hochschild Summary

Hochschild, undertakes the sociological study of emotional labor in the work force. She analyzes how worker’s feelings in the service industry are exploited for profit by employers and how workers are thought to modify their emotions to a set of rules not just as a surface performance, but on a deeper and emotional level with the customers intimate emotional life. To understand Hochschild’s views, we first need to understand the three types of labor to which she introduces in her studies: emotional labor, management and work, with each having a different meaning. Hochschild defines emotional labor as, “the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display; it is sold for a wage and therefore has exchange value”

Participation lead to normalization, referring to the taken-for-granted nature of both interactive and structural inequality (17), meaning that workers consent to being exploited, making it normal. Workers also recast hierarchy, showing themselves as superior, not inferior, to guests and acted upon multiple, symbolic hierarchies of worth and advantage—status, privilege, intelligence, competence, morality, and cultural capital—and mobilized these hierarchies selectively to establish themselves as superior to others (155). Portraying this through making fun of the guests behind their backs. Sherman’s games deal with the unpredictability of the guest, while Burawoy’s game dealt with the worker’s unpredictability with one another. Sherman critiques Burawoy due to concern with securing and obscuring surplus value at the point of production. He did not connect work subjectivities on the job class identities or entitlements outside the factory (263). Sherman’s critique of Hochschild deals with the norms of