Arlie Hochschild
Who
American sociologist, UC Berkeley. Founding figure of the sociology of emotions.
Core Idea
"Emotional labor" — the management of feeling to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job. "Feeling rules" — social norms dictate not just behavior but what we should feel and how we should express it. The commercialization of intimate life.
Key Works
- The Managed Heart (1983)
- The Second Shift (1989)
- Strangers in Their Own Land (2016)
Relevance
Emotional labor is what organizations ask of their communications teams, their spokespeople, and their brand systems — perform the right emotions in the right contexts to maintain institutional credibility. In MENA civil society contexts, the emotional labor demanded of organizations under political pressure is extreme: they must appear credible and calm while operating under threat. This is a core design constraint that most brand strategists never account for. The Managed Heart is essential.
Connected To
- Eva Illouz — Illouz extends Hochschild: emotional labor → emotional capitalism as a total economic system
- Sara Ahmed — Ahmed's "feeling rules" extends Hochschild into cultural/political emotion theory
- Randall Collins — emotional energy (Collins) is what emotional labor (Hochschild) produces or depletes
- Jonathan Crary — emotional labor extends into biological time; Crary tracks the same enclosure in sleep
- Pierre Bourdieu — emotional labor as a form of capital that is extracted and converted
