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Emotion work is a concept with a few different meanings.

The term emotion work was first used by sociologist Arlie Hochschild to refer to the management of emotions by workers to accomplish their paid work. She defined emotion work as "the act of trying to change in degree or quality an emotion or feeling." (Hochschild, 2003).

Arlie Hochschild in 1983 used it describe the conscious manipulation of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display (Ragin, 1994).

Emotions are strong feelings that individuals experience and express – love, anger, hate, friendship. [1] The study of emotions and feelings became a more important part of sociology beginning in the 1970s, following the development of the women's movement.

Some emotions were considered by earlier sociologists, such as Durkheim, Simmel and Parson, but they left little room for emotions and feelings. They devoted little attention to analysis of feelings of individuals. Emotions might easily be regarded as part of the interpretation process, and what is meaningful could involve these – for example, grief at a funeral, affection and love in attraction between two people, or anger expressed in an obscene gesture.

It is Hochschild who develops these ideas more fully, considering a fuller range of emotions, examining how these are connected to social interaction, how individuals work to express emotions, and how emotions are expressed in informal and formal situations and contexts. [2]

Arlie Hochschild (1940- ) is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who has established the sociology of emotions as a field of study. She has written three books, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (1983), The Second Shift (1989), and The Time Bind (1997).

While the term was first used by Hochschild to describe management of emotion in the labor market, the term has since been used by many scholars across a variety of disciplines to refer to various kinds of emotion management used by people in non-paid settings as well. Researchers analyzing work in non-paid settings have found the term useful to describe the "invisible" affective work performed by caregivers in family life, and women particular.

The term emotion work has been used to describe the often invisible dimensions of the relational work which people do as part of caring for their families or performing their paid jobs. Over the past 20 years a rich and multifaceted literature has developed on the emotion work done by healthcare professionals, flight attendants, lawyers, bill collectors, customer-service representatives and caregivers. [3]

Emotion work and management is a major part of Hochschild’s approach. This involves consideration of how people manage their own emotions, how individuals are capable of feeling and recognizing what is appropriate and inappropriate in the situation and interaction in which the individual is involved. She extends the analysis of emotion work further when she introduces the idea of control or management of emotions by others, including institutions and, more specifically, commercial enterprises. [4]

The literature on emotion work in paid jobs has focused considerable attention on the differences in the types of feeling work that individuals do, as well as on the expectations and norms which surround this work. [5]

Emotion work has also been defined as the management of one's own feelings or as "work done in a conscious effort to maintain the well being of a relationship"[6].

Hochschild extends the analysis of emotion work further when she introduces the idea of control or management of emotions by others, including institutions and, more specifically, commercial enterprises. This happens when "within institutions various elements of acting are taken away from the individual and replaced by institutional mechanisms" (Hochschild, p. 49). While some aspects of this may be inevitable in any human group, she argues that more alarming is when "some institutions have become very sophisticated in the techniques of deep acting; they suggest how to imagine and thus how to feel" (Hochschild, p. 49).

In analyzing how emotional labor is performed and structured, Hochschild uses Marx’s concepts of use-value and exchange value. She argues that expressing emotions is always work in the sense that there is an expenditure of human energy in showing sympathy, trust, good feelings in positive situations (sales in stores), or distrust and suspicion in negative situations (stopped by police). Emotional work in the private sphere has a use-value, for example, for maintaining and improving family life it is useful to have affection, love, tenderness, and at the same time some degree of toughness and discipline. In the commercial sector, emotions can sometimes be sold and have an exchange value – grief and compassion (funeral home), anxiety (life insurance salesman), nostalgia (antiques, baseball cards), trust and happiness (smiles and greetings at WalMart).

According to Hochschild (1983), many jobs require workers to produce a particular emotional state in another person. Bill collectors, for example, do emotion labour to deflate customers' status and evoke gratitude or fear in clients.

Jobs requiring emotional labor have three aspects to them. First, they are face-to-face or have voice contact. Second, the employee is required to produce a particular emotional state in others, for example, fear, gratitude, happiness, good feelings, etc. Third, since the workers are hired to produce these feelings, the employer exercises some control over the emotional activities of employees. The employee is attempting to manage emotions of customers, and employers in turn are managing the emotional activities of employees. In some cases, this begins to alter the actual emotions or feelings of the employees. This happens through "emotive dissonance" whereby strains develop between what the employee actually feels and what the employee is to portray to the public. The employee may attempt to change the latter, but if the latter is dictated by the employer, the employee may begin to change what they feel to coincide with what the employer wishes.

One contribution of Hochschild is to show how symbolic interaction can be used to help explain not only emotions, but also gender relationships and alteration of self by management through commercialization. Since large numbers of jobs today involve emotional labor, Hochschild makes an important contribution to the sociology of work and labor.

[edit] See also

• Emotional intelligence
• Emotive Dissonance
• Emotion labor
• Emotion labour

[edit] References

• Charles C. Ragin, 'Constructing Social Research: The Unity and Diversity of Method', Pine Forge Press, 1994, ISBN 0-8039-9021-9

• Arlie Russell Hochschild, 'The commercialization of intimate life: notes from home and work', University of California Press, 2003, ISBN 0-5202-1487-0

• Ellen Heuven, Arnold B. Bakkera, Wilmar B. Schaufelia, and Noortje Huismana, 'The role of self-efficacy in performing Emotion Work', Utrecht University, Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, The Netherlands, 2006 [7]

• Andre Fischbach, 'Determinents of Emotion Work', 2003 [8]

• Rose Opengart, 'Emotional Intelligence and Emotion Work: Eaxamining Constructs from an Intradisciplinary Framework', Human Resourse Development Review, Vol 4, No 1, March 2005, [9]

• Arlie Russell Hochschild, 'The Commodity Frontier', UC Press, 2004, [10]