Summary of The Managed Heart by Arlie Russell Hochschild

📖 The Scoop

Learn about the commercialization of human feeling.

Does your job require you to engage in emotional labor? That is, are you required to bury your true feelings, slap on a smile, and engage with customers as if everything is fine? We see people who work in customer service do this every day. People like waitresses and flight attendants shockingly maintain an upbeat attitude throughout their day as they interact with hundreds of customers. While many people believe these types of jobs don’t require much labor, they actually require some of the toughest skills that we don’t often discuss: emotional labor. Each day these employees must hold back their emotions, keep their cool, and avoid getting upset. But what’s the true cost of this “emotional work?” From a humanist and feminist perspective, Hochschild describes the toll this process of estrangement has on our personal feelings and its role in becoming an “occupational hazard” in one-third of Amerca’s workforce. As you read, you’ll learn how emotional labor is used as currency in today's society and why women find their jobs more taxing than men.

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