Monday 20 January 2020

Working at the edge: Emotional labour in the spectre of violence

an article by Jenna Ward (University of Leicester, UK) and Robert McMurray  and Scott Sutcliffe (University of York, UK) published in Gender, Work and Organization Volume 27 Issue 1 (January 2020)

Abstract

Drawing on semi‐structured interviews with police officers, door(wo)men and prison officers we present intimate, emotional and sometimes harrowing accounts of both the physical and emotional pain routinely endured by those employed as agents of social control.

This article positions labour undertaken in such contexts as ‘edgework'; exploring how the boundary, or ‘edge', between safety and danger is negotiated and managed ‘in the moment' through embodied performances of empathetic and antipathetic emotional labour and emotional neutrality.

Placing the concepts of edgework and emotional labour in dialogue, we open up a space in which to explore gendered conceptualizations of emotional labour and offer a more feminist appreciation of edgework that moves us beyond narrow concerns with pleasure, to account for embodied experience and emotional performance.

In so doing, this article offers a unique insight into the emotional labour repertoires of both men and women who work in the spectre of violence.

Labels:
door_staff, edgework, embodied, emotional_labour, extreme_work, pain, police, prison_officers, violence,


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