Feelings and Work in Modern History: Emotional Labour and Emotions about Labour (History of Emotions)

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 meaning of both paid and unpaid labour from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first 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 workplaces in 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 a 'work-life balance', explores the changing notions of professionalism and critically engages with the history of capitalism. In doing so, it interrogates the lasting impact of some of these histories on the current and future emotional landscape of labour"-- Provided by publisher Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents Figures Contributors Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Introduction Part I: Spaces of labour Chapter 2: Emotions and sexuality at work: Lyons Corner Houses, c. 1920–50 Chapter 3: Shop assistants, ‘living-in’ and emotional health, 1880s–1930s Chapter 4: The emotional landscape of the hospital residence in post-war Britain Chapter 5: Negotiating deindustrialization: Emotions and Ahmedabad’s textile workers Part II: Professional and personal identities Chapter 6: Education, work and self-worth in women’s letters to Soviet authorities, 1924–32 Chapter 7: Money, emotions and domestic service in Buenos Aires, 1950–70 Chapter 8: Managing feeling in the academic workplace: Gender, emotion and knowledge production in a Cambridge science department, 1950–80 Chapter 9: Control your feelings and be a leader: Representations of women, emotions and career in Brazilian media  Part III: Emotions, politics and power Chapter 10: ‘Violent emotions’: Canine suffering, emotional communities and the emotionally charged work of (anti)vivisection in London, New York and Paris Chapter 11: Whistleblowing, guilt and liberal democracy Chapter 12: The ‘system’ of service: Emotional labour and the theatrical metaphor Chapter 13: Emotional labour and the childcare crisis in neoliberal Britain Afterword Index