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FORMULATING
NEW SOCIAL SUBJECTS? AN INQUIRY INTO THE REALITY OF THE WAITRESS AS AFFECTIVE
WORKER
by Emma Dowling [Birbeck College, University of London]
Summary: One of
the major contributions of the operaista tradition is the concept – and
hands-on investigation – of class compostion.
A detailed analysis of the real conditions of workers today is necessary
to validate any analysis of contemporary capitalism, as well as its potential
sites of struggle; only thus can the concepts of immaterial and affective
labour be useful politically. This
paper is a contribution to such an effort.
Working as a waitress in a restaurant in a metropolitan city, where both
the product of my work and the means by which it was produced were highly
‘affective’, I have been in a privileged position to experience first-hand the
material conditions of this type of labour.
This paper addresses the way in which affective and immaterial labour
have been characterised in the literature from the point of view of my
experience. How well does the way in
which these forms of labour are defined apply to the service work I performed? In particular I will take up the debates
around the organisation and (im-)measurability of affective labour, and how
this can (or cannot) open up possibilities for resistance in the specific
context of my example. I then wish to show
what can be generalised from this case study and consider what this means for
the further development of the debates around affective and immaterial labour.
CV:
Emma Dowling is currently a research student
at Birkbeck College, University of London. Prior to this she completed a BA and
MSc in International Relations and Global Ethics respectively at the University
of Birmingham, where she also worked as the Outreach Officer for the Centre for
the Study of Global Ethics. She has been involved with the European and World
Social Forum processes and with the mobilisation against the G8 summit 2005.
She is currently co-editing a special edition of the online journal Ephemera
titled ‘Affective and Immaterial Labour Explored’ with Ben Trott and Rodrigo
Nunes.
E-mail: [email protected]