ABSTRACT
This chapter critically examines Hochschild’ semotional labour theory and its framework of ‘scripted’ organisational feeling rules that require workers to engage in surface acting and deep acting, leading to an estrangement from the self in interactive service work. Recent studies have challenged the notion that service workers are mere instruments of labour who become self-estranged; rather, they are ‘multi-skilled actors’ who are able to present different selves to different audiences during their everyday interactions. Bolton’s typology of workplace emotion places the work enacted by service professionals on a continuum that recognises different motivations for adhering to feeling rules or professional norms. However, the typology also presents problems in analysing the work of PRPs, in that normative assumptions are made about the influence of professional codes of conduct. ‘Entrepreneurial professions’, such as agency/consultancy PR, however, have a market-orientation rather than a public service remit. Furthermore, gender is missing from the typology. Based on these critiques, I argue for an extended framework for analysing emotional labour in PR that incorporates notions of self-identity expression, including pleasurable emotional labour, aesthetic labour, and, importantly, gender.
