Arlie Russell Hochschild

About the Book

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 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. 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.

About the Author

Arlie Russel Hochschild is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of three New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year, including The Second Shift, The Managed Heart, and The Time Bind. She has received numerous awards and grants ranging from Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships to a three-year research grant from the National Institute of Public Health.