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Getting to the heart of the emotional labour process: a reply to Brook

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  • Sharon C. Bolton

    (Strathclyde University Business School, Glasgow, sharon.bolton@gsb.strath.ac.uk)

Abstract

In an article published in this volume of WES Paul Brook suggests the need to strongly defend Hochschild’s emotional labour concept, as it is claimed that I threaten it with extinction with the development of a new typology of emotion management in the workplace.This article seeks to reply to Brook’s core concerns and deal with issues of substance about the phenomena Brook and I are both interested in. Mainly this paper considers how we conceptualize emotional labour and work, and how might that fit into labour process analysis? In response to the misgivings of Brook, the discussion will reveal why and how there is a need to develop analytically the idea of emotional labour, that the typology introduced in Emotion Management in the Workplace (Bolton, 2005a) offers a nuanced explanatory framework; and that labour process analysis is its theoretical home.

Suggested Citation

  • Sharon C. Bolton, 2009. "Getting to the heart of the emotional labour process: a reply to Brook," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 23(3), pages 549-560, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:23:y:2009:i:3:p:549-560
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017009337069
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sharon C. Bolton, 2004. "A Simple Matter of Control? NHS Hospital Nurses and New Management," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(2), pages 317-333, March.
    2. George Callaghan & Paul Thompson, 2002. "‘We Recruit Attitude’: The Selection and Shaping of Routine Call Centre Labour," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(2), pages 233-254, March.
    3. Chris Smith, 2006. "The double indeterminacy of labour power," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 20(2), pages 389-402, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Richard Godfrey & Joanna Brewis, 2018. "‘Nowhere else sells bliss like this’: Exploring the emotional labour of soldiers at war," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(6), pages 653-669, November.
    2. Ian Kessler & Paul Heron & Sue Dopson, 2015. "Managing patient emotions as skilled work and being ‘one of us’," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 29(5), pages 775-791, October.
    3. Peter Ikeler, 2016. "Deskilling emotional labour: evidence from department store retail," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 30(6), pages 966-983, December.
    4. Anne Benmore, 2014. "Emotion Management in Small Hotels: Meeting the Challenges of Flexibility and Informality," Eurasian Journal of Social Sciences, Eurasian Publications, vol. 2(3), pages 1-13.
    5. Donna Baines & Annabel Dulhunty & Sara Charlesworth, 2022. "Relationship-Based Care Work, Austerity and Aged Care," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 36(1), pages 139-155, February.
    6. Claire English & Gareth Brown, 2023. "My mum is on strike! Social reproduction and the (emotional) labor of ‘mothering work’ in neoliberal Britain," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(6), pages 1941-1959, November.

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