The economy of smiles: affect, labour and the contemporary deserving poor

Abstract

This paper examines the affective dimensions of new forms of informal entrepreneurial work carried out in spaces of unemployment. Situating the analysis within contemporary scholarship on deservingness and on affect and labour, I shed light on the forms of entrepreneurial labour that rely upon affect-driven economies of exchange underpinned by moral judgements of deservingness, value and worth. In particular, this paper draws on a multi-city (Melbourne, London, San Francisco) study of homeless street press sellers (The Big Issue and Street Sheet) to explore the ways in which contemporary practices of charity and care are carried out through individualized market-place exchanges. Sellers' accounts of their work reveal how smiling and being (or looking) happy is a performative expectation that must be managed in the face of poverty and precarity.

Affective labour and class distinction in the night-time economy

“…This has been a key focus of feminist critiques of immaterial labour, which have observed that this 'new' economy nevertheless relies on the exploitation of longstanding forms of feminised labour (Bolton, 2009;Oksala, 2016) and that young women experience heightened forms of insecurity and specific manifestations of class inequality in immaterial economies that tend to be highly precarious (Gill & Pratt, 2008). In response, there is now an emerging literature which is focusing on the way that class inequalities operate in immaterial economies (Gerrard, 2019;Gerrard & Farrugia, 2021). In this article we contribute to this literature by drawing on the tradition of class theorising established in feminist developments of Bourdieu (Adkins & Skeggs, 2005;Lawler, 2005;Skeggs, 2004;Skeggs & Loveday, 2012).…”

“…This article paper explores the classed distinctions enacted through affective labour in the urban night-time economy, with a focus on the affective and symbolic dynamics of 'hip' or 'bohemian' labour in the hospitality industry (Cameron, 2018;Lloyd, 2010). The article contributes to recent debates about the relationship between affective labour and class motivated by the increasing influence of autonomist Marxist theories of affective or immaterial labour (Hardt, 1999;Hardt & Negri, 2004), which have included calls for a renewed attention to the way that class inequalities and distinctions are implicated in the affective economies (Bolton, 2009;Farrugia, 2021;Gerrard, 2019;Gill & Pratt, 2008). In this context, the article brings theories of affective labour together with Bourdieusian approaches to the aesthetic and embodied aspects of class (Adkins & Skeggs, 2005;Lawler, 2005;Skeggs, 2004;Skeggs & Loveday, 2012) to theorise hospitality labour as a practice that enacts classed distinction and tensions reflecting the role of the night-time economy in the gentrification of inner-urban neighbourhoods.…”

Expanding emotional capital in court

“…Research into the management of emotions at work has primarily focused emotions with articulate and often deliberate display, such as smiling to customers (Gerrard, 2019), caring for patients (Diefendorff et al, 2011), or using anger to promote subordination (Bhowmick and Mulla, 2016). Especially in relation to care work, feeling with customers, patients or clients-being empathic-has also been an important dimension of understanding emotional labor.…”

Empreendedorismo e afeto: desafios e perspectivas de pesquisa

“…Sobre as produções que empregaram uma abordagem quantitativa, os métodos mais utilizados foram o uso de survey (por exemplo, Arora et al, 2013;Cardon & Kirk, 2015;Davis et al, 2017;Delgado-García et al, 2012;Nikolaev et al, 2020) e questionário (por exemplo, Bernoster et al, 2020;Laguna et al, 2016;Pérez-Fernández,et al, 2020a, 2020bYang et al, 2019). Dentre as pesquisas que utilizam métodos qualitativos, houve uma predominância do uso de entrevistas (por exemplo, Barzotto, 2019;Cockayne, 2016;Nassif et al, 2004;Vidigal & Nassif, 2013), estudo de caso (Ahsan, Zheng, DeNoble, & Musteen, 2018;Biniari, 2012;Lascaux & Kolesnikova, 2021), etnografia (Gerrard, 2019;Katila, Laine, & Parkkari, 2019), estratégia narrativa (Nouri, 2021) e diário (Ilonen & Heinonen, 2018). Seis pesquisas fizeram uso de uma metodologia mista (Chen et al, 2009;Gondim & Mutti, 2011;Kurczewska, Kyrö, Lagus, Kohonen, & Lindh-Knuutila, 2018;Lackéus, 2014;Lechat & Torrès, 2016;Stroe, Sirén, Shepherd, & Wincent, 2020).…”