ABSTRACT
The phrase ‘emotional labour’ is intended to highlight similarities as well as differences between emotional and physical labour, with both being hard, skilled, work requiring experience, affected by immediate conditions, external controls and subject to divisions of labour. Emotions can be regulated with varying sophistication and with various outcomes and, like other skills, emotional labour requires flexibility and adjustment. It involves anticipation, planning, pacing, timetabling and trouble-shooting. Emotions that are not acknowledged – whether our own or those of others – may be denied or suppressed, but full emotional labour involves working with feelings rather than denying them. At its most skilled emotional labour includes managing negative feelings in a way that results in a neutral or positive outcome.
