Emotional Labour Revisited

Abstract

As Chapter 12 explains, the extent to which traditional stereotypes of men’s emotional inarticulacy hold true within contemporary Western societies has been a focus for debate rather than a matter of consensus. This chapter brings an empirical perspective to bear on this question through three occupationally located case study examples of feelings rules (Hochschild 1979, 1983). In so doing, it considers not only the forms of gendered interaction through which rules are communicated and held in place, but also the spaces and tasks through which they are played out. For Hochschild, feelings rules are ‘the side of ideology that deals with emotion and feeling’ (1979: 551), a perspective which highlights the way social factors affect what one feels, and what the individual thinks and does about their feelings. While Hochschild concerned herself with the ways in which human beings’ capacity to reflect and act upon their emotionality could serve the ends of capitalism, here gender power is our focus. Thus, we explore the ways in which feelings rules inform men’s and women’s orientations to their own emotions, and to those of other people. Gender, we argue, is an aspect of these rules; how our participants made sense of what each other were feeling and how they felt able to express their emotions were informed by their understandings of what a man or woman might be expected to feel and do in any particular context.