SOCI2050 28th August 2020

Week 5: Surviving work

The consequences of rationalisation and modernisation

Recap

Rationalisation: Tradition, values, and emotions are gradually replaced by

reason and calculation, becoming the behaviour motives of people in society.

This week

Alienation (Marx)

Split of thinking from doing (People work without thinking)

 Some things do not play their original role or are used as a tool to achieve
another purpose.
 In regard to labour, people’s material and spiritual production and their
products become alien forces, which in turn dominate people.
 In the activities of alienation, people lose their initiative and are enslaved
by alien material or spiritual forces, so that their personality cannot
develop in an all-round way but can only develop one-sidedly or even
deformed.

For example: In agricultural societies, people grew their own vegetables and fruits
through labour, hence they work in order to satisfy their own need. In this situation,
They are satisfied and delighted with the results of their labour. But under the
production conditions of capitalist private ownership, workers extremely hate and
even hate the fruits of their labour. They are oppressed and exploited, but they do not
know the production relationship, so they tear up contracts and smash machines.
Labour is originally satisfying, but under the production conditions of capitalist
private ownership, the use of labour, that is, labour is a tool used by capitalists to
extract workers' surplus value.

It is now not the worker who makes use of the conditions of labour, but the
conditions of labour make use of the worker.
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Emotional Labour: A type of labour other than physical and mental

work (Hochschild)

Split of thinking from doing and also feeling

A form of labour that suppresses self-emotion in order to cater to customers at

work. The motivation for work comes from the spirit or heart.

Jobs involving emotional labour are defined as those that:

 require face-to-face or voice-to-voice interaction with the public.

 require the worker to produce an emotional state in another person.
 allow the employer, through training and supervision, to exercise a degree of
control over the emotional activities of employees.

For example: flight attendants have to pay "passionate emotional labour"; nurses
have to pay "caring emotional labour"; doctors have to pay "calm emotional labour",
funeral practitioners have to pay "sad emotional labour" and so on.

As particular economies move from a manufacturing to a service-based

economy, more workers in a variety of occupational fields are expected to
manage their emotions according to employer demands. Moreover, interpersonal
skills are much more in demand than skills in manufacturing with the increasing
number of service industries.

What is your true mood? This is called emotional feeling.

What kind of emotion do you express? This is called emotional expression.

The greater the difference between "emotional expression" and "emotional

feeling", the greater the amount of "emotional labour" you have to pay.
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In order to meet the requirements of the organization, employees may adopt
three different emotional labour strategies:

 Surface acting, that is, pretending to show the desired emotions without
touching deep feelings.
 Deep acting. Employees who adopt this strategy will try to adjust their inner
feelings to meet the requirements of the organization.
 Natural-action emotional labour strategy. In this case, employees do not
need to adjust their emotions cognitively, and naturally express the emotions
they experience in the workplace.

Thinking about stress

Since the motivation of emotional labour is driven by the heart, there will also be
exhaustion from physical labour and brain fatigue from mental labour, which
can easily form a build-up of psychological pressure and cause exhaustion.

Three strategies to prevent stress

1. Removing the source of stress (job redesign, changes to organisational

structure, etc.)
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2. Altering workers response to stressors (e.g. increase ability to cope with stress)

3. Supporting workers to deal with the consequences of stress (e.g. counselling)