ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with a specific kind of branding work, one implicitly addressed from the opening paragraph—namely, that activity by which a set of tasks comes to assume the status of an immediately recognizable "occupation". Consistent with a decentralized view of branding work, occupational branding may be proprietary, strategic, and compensated, as in the labor of some professional associations, but it is not necessarily so. Although the glass slipper account may appear to embrace the sociomateriality of occupational identity, a closer look is illuminating. The glass slipper operates as a jurisdiction claim for the discipline of communication, declaring that communication theorizing is a better way of understanding the evolution of work as well as explaining and intervening in the problem of occupational segregation. The chapter explores how theorizing communication through relational ontology, especially affect theory, might make a difference to practices of work.
