著者

阿部 浩之

出版者

経済理論学会

雑誌

季刊経済理論 (ISSN:18825184)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, no.2, pp.64-76, 2010-07-20

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Today, as the market economy progresses, fields such as family care, nursing care, medical care, and childcare are transacted as interpersonal service labor in the market, and wage laborers are becoming increasingly in charge of such services. With regards to this trend, the concept of emotional labor was proposed by Hochschild as something that expresses a feature of interpersonal service labor in contemporary capitalism. Emotional labor aims to create an appropriate mental state in the targeted people (Hochschild). In interpersonal service labor, emotional labor is used for smoothly performing the work concerned, and it is often an essential factor. Emotional labor can be discussed as a series of labor processes consisting of three phases: (1) the emotion of the laborers toward customers; (2) acting as a visible expression of emotion; and (3) the emotion of customers that receive the service concerned. In discussions that focus on emotion, emotion management has often been considered a skill in emotional labor, and it is necessary to pay more attention to (2) acting as a visible expression of emotion. In a wide sense of general labor, emotional labor is performed in the form of nursing care or the like as part of household work. When it becomes associated with commodity economy, interpersonal service takes the form of article of commerce, and it may be provided in the form of selfemployment (for example practicing psychiatrist and psychological counselor), or it may be provided as wage-labor. Even in the same wage labor, there are qualitative differences between emotional labor in standardized customer service that is regulated by a manual, as is represented by fast food restaurant service (type A) and emotional labor by nursing/care personnel or the like (type B). In type B, it is difficult to complete service just by combining surface acting; instead it requires deep acting, unlike type A. In emotional labor by nursing/care personnel or the like (type B), it is necessary to consider the situation in which laborers and customers face each other in the form of multiple laborers versus multiple customers; and group-to-group, instead of one-to-one or individual-to-individual. Since Hochschild's proposal, emotional labor, which has tended to be discussed from the viewpoint of individual-to-individual, needs to be reevaluated from the viewpoint of group-to-group, with capitalistic labor organizations in mind. In emotional labor performed by a labor organization, acting becomes rather theatrical; or in other words, emotional labor is performed cooperatively. While taking a theatrical structure, emotional labor progresses qualitatively. Discussions on emotional labor are considered to have abundant possibilities to elucidate what kinds of features are possessed by labor power that is a commodity closely related to character, and how labor power commodities are formed and function in capitalism.