Service Work
Critical Perspectives
Price: $33.95
Add to Cart- ISBN: 978-0-415-95317-7
- Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
- Published by: Routledge
- Publication Date: 14th August 2008 (Available for Pre-order)
- Pages: 216
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About the Book
Everyday, we are bombarded with advertising images of the smiling service worker. The book is written with the aim of focusing beneath the surface of these fairy tale images, to seek out and understand the reality of service workers’ experience. Within the sociology of work and related literatures, there are an increasing number of empirical studies of different types of service work, but there has been little progress in attempts to theorize the nature of service work, per se. This book fills this gap by bringing together major scholars from the US and UK who use a range of critical perspectives to explore key elements in the organization and experience of contemporary service work. It will make an invaluable secondary text for advanced undergraduates and graduates studying courses/modules such as sociology of work, industrial sociology, social theory and work, organization studies, and organizational theory.
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors
Chapter 1: Critical Perspectives on Service Work: An Introduction, Marek Korczynski and Cameron Macdonald
Outlines the state of the literature on service work. Points out that there have been few attempts to apply critical theorizing across service work per se – hence the need for this book. Gives an overview of the book.
Chapter 2: Chaplin’s Modern Times: Service Work, Authenticity, and Nonsense at the Red Moon Café, Janet Sayers and Nanette Monin
Chaplin’s Modern Times, traditionally seen primarily as a examination of factory work, is examined in terms of its portrayal of service work. The film’s analysis of service work is shown to be brilliant and prescient.
Chapter 3: The Globalization of Nothing and the Outsourcing of Service Work, George Ritzer and Craig Lair
The first application of George Ritzer’s concept of ‘Nothing’ to the realm of work. Argues that ‘Nothing’ is key to the texture of globalized service work, with Indian call centers the key example.
Chapter 4: The Disneyization of Society, Alan Bryman
Extends Ritzer’s McDonaldization thesis to apply aspects of postmodern theory to service organizations. Argues that theming, the dedifferentiation of consumption, merchandizing, and emotional labor combine to create a distinctly inauthentic, hypercapitalist workplace.
Chapter 5: Understanding the Contradictory Lived Experience of Service Work:
The Customer-Oriented Bureaucracy, Marek Korczynski
Argues that experience of service work and organization of service work are beset by contradictions. Puts forward model of customer-oriented bureaucracy as ideal type capturing the essence of contradictory service work organization.
Chapter 6: Labor Process Theory: Putting the Materialism Back into the Meaning of Service Work, Chris Warhurst, Paul Thompson and Dennis Nickson
Argues against idea that consumption is more important than production relations. Surveys research on service work within labor process tradition. Highlights key contributions in the analysis of emotional labor and aesthetic labor.
Chapter 7: Intersectionality in the Emotional Proletariat: A New Lens on Employment Discrimination in Service Work, Cameron Macdonald and David Merrill
Applies feminist theories of intersectionality to examine why emotional proletariat is a gendered ghetto also segmented by ethnicity and social class. Sows how the nature of the service interaction creates context for new, more intractable forms of discrimination in hiring.
Chapter 8: The Globalization of Care Work, Rhacel Salazar Parreñas
Shows how international market in care work leads to an unequal distribution of care resources in the global economy. Highlights role of the states underpinning this - particularly in terms of migration, and welfare policies.
Chapter 9: The Promise of Service Worker Unionism Dorothy Sue Cobble and Michael Merrill
Highlights challenges and opportunities for unionism in service economy. Argues that relationships with customers can be important lever in workers’ attempts to mobilize broad support. Service workers bringing aspects of their selves to their work plays both an enabling and an inhibiting role in worker activism.
Chapter 10: Conclusion - Latte Capitalism and Late Capitalism: Reflections on Fantasy and Care as Part of the Service Triangle, Yiannis Gabriel
Focuses on care as a key dimension of service work. Applies psychoanalytic theory to argue that care work unleashes emotional dynamics for workers and customers leading to ambivalence, ‘splitting’ and the creation of fantasies. Concludes that, therefore, there is a considerable degree of unpredictability and unmanageability at the service interface.
Index
About the Author(s)
Marek Korczynski is Professor of Sociology of Work at Loughborough University. He is the author of On the Front Line: Organization of Work in the Information Economy, co-authored with Steve Frenkel, Karen Shrine, and May Tam, Social Theory at Work, co-edited with Randy Hodson and Paul Edwards, and Human Resource Management in Service Work (Palgave MacMillan 2002).
Cameron Macdonald is Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of Shadow Mothers: Nannies, Au Pairs, and the Micropolitics of Mothering, and Working in the Service Society (co-edited with Carmen Sirianni).