The alienated heart: Hochschild’s ‘emotional labour’ thesis and the anticapitalist politics of alienation

摘要

Arlie Russell Hochschild’s influential emotional labour thesis in TheManaged Heart (1983) exposes and opposes the harm wrought by the commodificationof human feelings as customer service, and complements contemporary anticapitalist writing with an enduring influence and political relevance that is underpinned by Hochschild's application of Marx’s alienationtheory. Critics have sought to blunt the politics of her thesis by rejectingas absolutist her condemnation of workers’ alienation. But her applicationof alienation theory is not thorough, since her explicit usage of it is limitedto only two of Marx’s four dimensions, and thus it stops short of theorisingalienation as generic to society. This undermines Hochschild’s argumenton emotional labourers’ resistance, since she inadequately captures theway workers are shaped by alienation but not blinded to the reality of capitalism.The continuing political potency of her thesis requires that it shouldbe defended and strengthened.