The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling
by Arlie Russell Hochschild
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In private life, we try to induce or suppress love, envy, and anger through deep acting or "emotion work," just as we manage our outer expressions of feeling through surface acting. In trying to bridge a gap between what we feel and what we "ought" to feel, we take guidance from "feeling rules" about what is owing to others in a given situation. Based on our private mutual understandings of feeling rules, we make a "gift exchange" of acts of emotion management. We bow to each other not show more simply from the waist, but from the heart. But what occurs when emotion work, feeling rules, and the gift of exchange are introduced into the public world of work? In search of the answer, Arlie Russell Hochschild closely examines two groups of public-contact workers: flight attendants and bill collectors. The flight attendant's job is to deliver a service and create further demand for it, to enhance the status of the customer and be "nicer than natural." The bill collector's job is to collect on the service, and if necessary, to deflate the status of the customer by being "nastier than natural." Between these extremes, roughly one-third of American men and one-half of American women hold jobs that call for substantial emotional labor. In many of these jobs, they are trained to accept feeling rules and techniques of emotion management that serve the company's commercial purpose. Just as we have seldom recognized or understood emotional labor, we have not appreciated its cost to those who do it for a living. Like a physical laborer who becomes estranged from what he or she makes, an emotional laborer, such as a flight attendant, can become estranged not only from her own expressions of feeling (her smile is not "her" smile), but also from what she actually feels (her managed friendliness). This estrangement, though a valuable defense against stress, is also an important occupational hazard, because it is through our feelings that we are connected with those around us. On the basis of this book, Hochschild was featured in Key Sociological Thinkers, edited by Rob Stones. This book was also the winner of the Charles Cooley Award in 1983, awarded by the American Sociological Association and received an honorable mention for the C. Wright Mills Award. show lessTags
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Emotional Labor
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17+ Works 3,517 Members
Arlie Russell Hochschild, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of two New York Times Notable Books of the Year, THE SECOND SHIFT and THE MANAGED HEART. She has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a research grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. Her articles have show more appeared in Harper's, Mother Jones, and Psychology Today, among others. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, the writer Adam Hochschild. (Publisher Provided) Arlie Russell Hochschild, Hochschild was a Professor of Sociology and directed the Center for Working Families at the University of California, Berkeley. She married writer Adam Hochschild, and they had two sons. She has been a Lang Visiting Professor of Social Change at Swarthmore College and a Fulbright Scholar at the Center for Development Studies in Trivandrum, Kerala, India. She has written articles that have appeared in scholarly journals as well as Harper's, Mother Jones, and The New York Times Magazine. She has received awards from the Fulbright, Guggenheim and Alfred P. Sloan foundations and from the National Institute of Public Health. Hochschild is the author of "The Second Shift," The Managed Heart," and "The Time Bind." She believed that women moving into the workforce have not been accompanied by changes in the workplace, and the issues of daycare and the role of men at home have caused tension within the family. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Intersezioni [Il Mulino] (289)
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling
- Original publication date
- 1983
- Epigraph
- The one area of her occupational life in which she might be "free to act," the area of her own personality, must now also be managed, must become the alert yet obsequious instrument by which goods are distributed.
--C. ... (show all)Wright Mills - Dedication
- For Ruth and Francis Russell
- First words
- In a section in Das Kapital entitled "The Working Day," Karl Marx examines depositions submitted in 1863 to the Children's Employment Commission in England.
- Blurbers
- Terkel, Studs
Classifications
- Genres
- Sociology, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, Sexuality and Gender Studies
- DDC/MDS
- 152.4 — Philosophy and Psychology Psychology Sensory perception, movement, emotions, physiological drives Emotions
- LCC
- BF531 .H62 — Philosophy, Psychology and Religion Psychology Psychology Affection. Feeling. Emotion
- BISAC
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- 353
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- 89,021
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- Languages
- English, French, German, Italian
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 11
- ASINs
- 4





























































