Paper short abstract:

I would like to rethink the concept of ‘emotional labor’ by Arlie R. Hochschild in the service economy society today especially concerning ‘Labor’ at this time. Different kind of emotional labor is observed today's workplace compare to 1980s.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I would like to rethink the concept of 'emotional labor' by Arlie R. Hochschild.

Emotional management is a common requirements of job in the service industry. Hochschild had visited the Delta Airlines Stewardess Training Center in 1980s to research how the flight attendants are trained to control passenger's feeling in the airplane. She named such work in service 'emotional labor' and explained the mechanism of communication in service with Stanislavski System, a systematic approach to training actors.

According to Hochschild, 'emotional labor' is interpreted either employee's 'gift' or the resource to 'exchange' as value to the community (company). And this kind of work practice establishes the relationship between employer and employees.

After my participant observation in the Airlines in Europe, I classified the service work into two concepts 'Labor' and 'Opera' in Latin. Labor means the quota work and Opera is a creative practice in work. I discussed about Hochschild's concept of emotional labor in my publication in 2013, however, her concept did not explained much about Opera, maybe it is because her study was in 1980s when the service society had not yet developed. In the growth of service economy today, co-creating of value became more important, Different kind of emotional labor is observed today such an unpaid overtime which people often call 'service' in Japan.

In this paper, I would like to rethink the concept of 'emotional labor' in the service economy society focusing 'Labor' at this time.