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10.1177/0730888410373076 2010 37: 295 Work and OccupationsJeffrey
J. SallazService Labor and Symbolic Power : On Putting Bourdieu to
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10.1177/0730888410373076http://wox.sagepub.comService Labor and
Symbolic Power: On Putting Bourdieu to WorkJeffrey J.
Sallaz1AbstractThesubfieldthatisthesociologyofservicelaborcontinuestogenerate
vibrant internal dialogue. It was the authors original intent to
push forward the frontier of theory within this field, by
performing an ethnography of service work in a non-American context
(that of post-apartheid South Africa). Once in the field, however,
he found himself moving backward as he was forced to problematize
basic assumptions concerning the very category of service. In
brief, the author discovered that managers in a competitive tourism
industry
refusedtolabeltheiremployeesinteractivelaborasservice,whereas
workers themselves actively advocated for such a designation. To
document the interplay between material and symbolic politics of
production, the author
turnedtotheworkofPierreBourdieuespeciallyhistheoryofpolitical
representation and the accompanying concept of nomination
struggles.Keywordsservice work, Bourdieu, labor, South AfricaThe
most resolutely objectivist theory must take account of agents
representa-tion of the social world and . . . thereby to the very
construction of this world, via the labour of representation (in
all senses of the term) that they continually perform.Bourdieu
(1999a, p. 234)1University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USACorresponding
Author:Jeffrey J. Sallaz, PO Box 210027, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
Email: [email protected] by Nicolas Diana on October 25,
2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 296Work and Occupations
37(3)The service occupations today saturate our lifeworlds. They
pour our lattes, pluck our eyebrows, empty our bedpans. Nor can
there can be any ambiguity about the effect on sociological
scholarship of this shift from an old, manu-facturing-based economy
to a new service society. The result has been a
veri-tableparadigmshiftinthesociologyofwork.Ethnographersintenton
documenting the organization of the labor process no longer trudge
off to the factory but, rather, to the local fast-food franchise.
Scholars of labor move-ments increasingly focus their gaze not on
the bureaucratic unions that long dominated
heavyindustriesandcrafts buton thesocialmovement union-ism that
holds hope for organizing low-wage service workers (Fantasia &
Voss, 2004; Lopez, 2004; Milkman, 2006). Also, the past two decades
have witnessed a proliferation of new theoretical frameworks for
making sense of
thespecificitiesofservicework(MacDonald&Korczynski,2009).Emo-tionallabor,carework,andthree-wayinterestallianceareallconceptsof
recent origin, and all represent significant additions to the
theoretical toolkit passed down from classic studies of industrial
sociology.During the same period in which the sociology of work has
been shaken
upthecanonofsociologicaltheoryinAmericaalsohasbeen.Parsonian
structural functionalism fell from favor during the late 1960s and
1970s, in the face of both a radical resurgence of Marxist
sociology and the emergence
ofnewtheoriescenteringthelivedexperienceofwomen,minorities,and
othersubalterns(Gouldner,1970).Thepasttwodecades,meanwhile,has
witnessed a growing interest among American sociologists in the
sociologi-calresearchprogrampioneeredbythelatePierreBourdieu(Emirbayer&
Johnson,2008). Althoughsurprisinginthesensethat Americansociology
has historically eschewed continental theory, Bourdieus theory
represents a powerful synthesis of the sociologies of Karl Marx (in
its emphasis on power and domination), Emile Durkheim (in its
attention to the interplay between cultural categories and social
structure), and Max Weber (in its theorization of legitimacy as an
institutional process). Bourdieu is now one of the most cited
theorists in top American sociology journals (Sallaz & Zavisca,
2008).Given these trends, it would be fair to say that the ground
is ripe for dialogue
betweenthesetwoemergentfields.Infact,sociologistsofworkhavethor-oughly
explored at least one of Bourdieus key ideas: that of the habitus,
the embodied sens of reality through which social agents perceive
and act on the world. Desmond (2007), for instance, documented how
the U.S. Forest Service manages its labor supply by manipulating
young mens rural-masucline
habi-tus.Scholarsofserviceandcultureindustrieshaveinturnexaminedhow
employers, to ensure the performance of aesthetic labor, actively
encourage
(especiallyfemale)workerstocultivateparticularembodieddispositions
by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded
from
Sallaz297(Dean,2005;Hanser,2008;Pettinger,2005;Warhurst&Nickson,2007;
Williams & Connell, in press; Wissinger, 2009; Witz, Warhurst,
& Nickson, 2003). As illustrated by these studies, the value of
the habitus concept is that
itexpandsourpurviewbeyondthelaborprocess,ontothelargerfieldof
experiences and meanings that workers bring with them into the
workplace.What though of the other key elements of Bourdieus
theory? Do they also hold potential for advancing our understanding
of the dynamics of contem-porary service work? This article
considers the relevance of Bourdieus polit-ical sociology for
elucidating new objects of inquiry at the point of production. It
commences, in a section called Labor and Representation, by
reviewing the corpus of Bourdieus writings to see how he analyzed
the subject of labor. Over the course of his career, I conclude,
Bourdieu moved away from argu-ments about the habitus and work
organization to establish the principles of
ageneralsociologyofsymbolicpower. Atthispoint,thearticlecritically
interrogates three key assumptions of the sociology of service work
through
thelensofBourdieuspolitical-culturalsociology.Doingsoprovidesa
framework for analyzing the actors and strategies involved with the
symbolic
strugglesthatundergirdeventhemostbasicbread-and-butterissuesat
work.The second half of the article shows how Bourdieus political
sociology may be put to work. It presents qualitative data drawn
from my own ethno-graphic study of labor inside a large
entertainment complex in contemporary South Africa. It was during
such fieldwork that I discovered a puzzle. Rather
thanseekingtoencourageemotionallabor,managersinthiscompetitive
tourism industry refused to label employees interactive work as
service.
Inturn,workersactivelyadvocatedforsuchadesignation.Suchstruggles
over the definition of workers labor were not peripheral to, but
rather were key elements of, the larger production regime. We thus
conclude by
elaborat-ingontherelevanceforthesociologyofworkofoneofBourdieuskey
ideas: that of the nomination struggle in situ.Labor and
RepresentationFrom Earthly Labor to Symbolic Power:TheTrajectory of
Pierre BourdieuHow can the theory of Pierre Bourdieu be used to
advance our understanding of service labor? Insofar as Bourdieu
himself never explicitly addressed the subject, we are required to
do a brief excavation of his overall body of work. by Nicolas Diana
on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 298Work and
Occupations
37(3)Whatfollowshereismyowninterpretationofthiscorpus,basedonclose
reading of all available English translations of his books and
articles. I argue
that,forourpurposes,thisbodyofworkcanbedividedintothreephases:
first,earlyethnologicalstudiesofworkinthecolonialcontext(especially
TravailetTravailleurs en Algrie, published inEnglish as Algeria1960
in 1979); second, a series of monographs on culture and fields in
modern France
(Distinctionin1984,representingthecrowningachievement);andthird,a
public sociological critique of globalization and neoliberalism
(works such
asFiringBackin2003).Theoverallpicturetoemergeisofashiftfrom
analysis of work in its local context to that of culture in a
global context.Bourdieus first major research project was an
ethnological study of the rural Algerian people known as the
Kabyle. They lived, Bourdieu argued, in an undifferentiated social
space without autonomous fields such as universi-ties and labor
markets (Bourdieu, 1977). As a consequence, their schemes of
perception,orhabitus,weretraditional;theywereattunedtothepastand
generatedintheKabylepeopleadesiretoconformtoinheritedmodels
(Bourdieu, 1979, p. 9). On a day-to-day basis, this meant that
labor (of which the tasks of farming were primary) was performed as
it had been for centuries before. But this system was disrupted by
French colonization. Forced off the land, the peasant migrated to
the city where his traditional habitus proved to be ill equipped
for a modern economy. He was unable to imagine his labor power as a
commodity to be sold at market nor could he accumulate savings to
plan for periods of unemployment. Like the proverbial fish out of
water, the newly urbanized peasant fell into a traditionalism of
despair.After returning from Algeria, Bourdieu began a series of
studies of mod-ern France as an example of what he called a
differentiated society, that is,
asocialworldcharacterizedbymultiplefieldsandspeciesofcapital(cul-tural,
economic, etc.). Dispositions still mattered. For instance, in
Distinction (Bourdieu, 1984), his monumental study of consumption
and taste, Bourdieu depicted modern France not as a static social
order oriented toward fidelity to the past but as a dynamic game of
culture. Artists continually vie to outdo one
anotherwithformalinnovations,resultinginapermanentrevolutionof
cultural forms. But to enter this game in the first place, one must
have
expe-riencedaparticularformofsocialization:achildhoodinwhichonewas
assured of having ones basic material needs met. Working-class
children, in contrast, endure scarcity and hardship, resulting in a
taste for necessity that
hinderstheirabilitytoplaythegamesofculturefoundinthevariouselite
fields.In general, however, fields are autonomous spaces, such that
the cultural games played within them are rarely overdetermined by
material constraints. by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012
wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from Sallaz299In fact, the work of
artists, politicians, and other professionals is character-ized by
nuanced strategies of framing, categorizing, and classifying
symbols. It was one of Bourdieus enduring contributions to
elucidate these strategies and the principles underling themto
expose, that is, a modern economy of
symbolicpower.Curiouslythough,theworldofworkforthemostpart
escapedhisgaze.Hisempiricalstudiesfocusedontheeducationsystem
(Bourdieu&Passeron,1979),thepoliticalfield(Bourdieu,1996),theart
world (Bourdieu, 1993), and housing markets (Bourdieu, 2005). It
was not until the end of his career that he would return, if but
briefly, to the subject of work.In what I label Bourdieus third
phase, he assumed the role of public intel-lectual to critique the
global spread of neoliberal ideology. Emanating from the United
States, this ideology demands the simultaneous withdrawal of the
state from the realm of the social and the ascendency of market
forces as the ultimate arbitrator of value and exchange (Bourdieu
& Wacquant, 1999). In works such as The Weight of the World
(Bourdieu, 1999b), Bourdieu specu-lated as to how neoliberalism
affects workers, trade unions, and the working class as whole. Once
more he invoked his dispositional theory, now to explain
howworkersrespondtotheeconomicprecariousnessproducedby
neoliberalism:Insecurity acts directly on those it touches (and
whom it renders
inca-pableofmobilizingthemselves)andindirectlyonalltheothers,
throughthefearitarouses...[Theseare]theprerequisitesforan
increasingly successful exploitation of these submissive
dispositions produced by insecurity. (Bourdieu, 1998b, pp.
82-83)Asthissummaryshows,Bourdieuswork,althoughitneglectstoconsider
explicitlythestructuringofservicelabor,isrepletewithpossiblelinesof
inquiry.A Sociology of Representation: Nomination Struggles at
WorkThis article expounds on one of Bourdieus key theoretical
contributions: his analysis of the symbolic politics of nomination
struggles. There is of course
anexcellentbranchofresearchexamininghowworkplacescanbesitesof
contention over meanings, identity, and dignity (Hodson, 2001;
Lopez, 2006; Sherman, 2010; Vallas, 2006). Room exists, however, to
flesh out in full how Bourdieus work on symbolic representation
allows us to analyze the work-place as a site of micro-political
contestation over the existence and meaning by Nicolas Diana on
October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 300Work and
Occupations 37(3)of service work. In brief, I argue that scholars
too readily take for granted the existence of service work as a
category of analysis. They prematurely black box the notion,
thereby neglecting to consider that the very concept can be a stake
of contestation on the shop floor.To elaborate, the emergent
sociology of service work makes three assump-tions that are
problematic from a Bourdieuian perspective. First, that service
work (or some similar term) is a self-evident concept that can be
defined a priori by the analyst. The typical work in the field
begins by offering a new
labelanddefinitionforthephenomenonunderconsideration.Hochschild
(1985),forinstance,introducesthetermemotionallaboranddefinesitas
work in which management attempts to control a customers feelings
by con-trolling a workers emotional displays. Leidner (1993) in
turn uses the term interactive labor to denote all employment in
which workers have
face-to-faceorvoice-to-voicecontactwithclients.Eachthenproceedsfromtheir
initialdefinition,throughaseriesofmodalities(i.e.,logicaloperatorsthat
assume the validity of the initial premise or concept; see Latour,
1987), and onto a set of empirical conclusions.Bourdieu, in
contrast, argued that there may occur definitional struggles to
establish wherein lie the boundaries between formal work and other
forms of labor.
Thetaskofthesociologistishencetoobjectifyobjectification:to
takeasonesdatathehistorybehindanygivensystemofclassifications
(Bourdieu, 1984, p. 7). In Practical Reason (1998b), he gives the
example of an attempt by altar boys in the Catholic Church to form
a union. The courts denied their claim, arguing that a church is
not to be considered a business entity nor are those who labor
inside it to be thought of as employees. And in the United States,
there is ongoing debate as to the legal status of home health
careaides.Currentlytheyareclassifiedascompanions,notemployees,
andsoareeligibleforneitherprotectionssuchasthoseprovidedbymini-mum
wage legislation nor benefits such as overtime pay. As these
examples demonstrate, work can be a stake in struggles to mobilize
symbolic power. Actors will seek to grant or deny to a particular
activity the title of work:
abeing-perceivedguaranteedasaright(Bourdieu,1999a,p.239).By
implication, just as the work/nonwork boundary can constitute a
site of strug-gle so too may the work/service work boundary
(Sherman, 2005). When does a form of labor constitute service? When
will key actors (especially
work-ersandmanagement)seektoadvance,challenge,ordefendsuchclaims?
Such questions lead to our next extension.A second common claim
made by sociologists of work is that service will
representanadditionaldemandimposedbymanagementonworkers.All
formsoflabor,thisreasoninggoes,willinvolvesomenoninteractive by
Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Sallaz301duties. Both forklift drivers and flight attendants
transport heavy carts up and down aisles. Both chemists and
barristas pour hot liquid from one flask into another. Service
workers, however, face an additional layer of responsibility: that
of managing their emotional expressions so as to generate in
customers
anappropriatefeelingstate.TheclassicexampleisHochschilds(1985)
comparisonofan18th-centurychildfactorylaborerwithamodernflight
attendant. The former was likely estranged from his body insofar as
his mus-cles and tendons were gradually worn down to produce profit
for someone else. The boys emotions, however, were safely his own.
The flight attendant, in contrast, sells not only her physical
labor power but also her capacity to
engageinemotionallabor.Ascapitalismsteadilypullsemotionsintothe
realmofcommodityproductionandcirculation(whatHochschildcallsa
transmutation of emotion systems), service workers are at hazard
for not simply physical alienation but emotional alienation as well
(Grant, Morales, & Sallaz, 2009).When viewing work through a
Bourdieuian lens, service appears not as an additional claim placed
on workers but as a potential counterclaim to be made by workers.
Symbolic acts of nominationthat is, moves to classify an
objectasacertainsortofthingarealsoalwaysactsofclaimmaking
(Bowker&Star,2000).Bylobbyingthegovernmenttolabelthelaborof
home health care workers as formal employment, advocates seek to
guar-anteetheseworkersanarrayofrightsandmaterialbenefits,rangingfrom
protectionagainstdiscriminationtosocialsecurityeligibility.Butcanthe
sameholdforachievingtheofficiallabelofaserviceworker? Although
stateagenciessuchastheU.S.BureauofLaborStatisticsuseavarietyof
schemata for classifying different forms of work, regulatory
systems rarely draw a significant distinction between manufacturing
and service jobs for the
purposeofdeterminingrightsandbenefits.Nonetheless,thisdoesnotrule
out the possibility that at the level of the individual enterprise
or workplace, symbolic struggles (with very real stakes) may take
place over the service
worklabel.Buttoanalyzesuchmicro-politicalstrugglesrequiresthatwe
consider as well the issue of managerial action within economic
fields.Thisbringsustoathirdextensionthatcanbebroughtaboutbya
Bourdieuianperspective.
Thisoneproblematizestheassumptionthatdeci-sionmakerswithinafirm,whenplanningworkroutinesandrequirements
regarding service, operate in line with a basic economic logic of
product differentiation. The various strands of scholarship on
service work are here in
agreementthatcompetitionwillbegetademandforhigh-qualitycustomer
service. Industries in which some entity possesses a monopoly on
the goods
orservicewillprovidemanagerswithlittleincentivetoinduceaservice by
Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from
302Work and Occupations 37(3)orientation in workers. Consumers are
a captive market, whereas training and monitoring costs for
emotional labor are not negligible. The paradigmatic example is the
government post office, universally reviled for its long lines and
its workers surly demeanors. In contrast, competitive industries
should use quality service as a means of product differentiation.
If consumers have a choice as to where to purchase an item or
service, all else (especially price)
beingequal,theywillchoosethefirmthatoffersthemthemostpleasant
experience.ButBourdieus(2005)ownworkonthecontemporaryeconomyargues
thatindustriesresemblelesscompetitivefreemarketsthancomplementary
fields of production. Dovetailing with recent approaches in
economic
sociol-ogy(Fligstein,2002;Podolny,2008),Bourdieu(2005)depictedeconomic
fields as stable structures wherein dominant firms establish the
rules of the
game,whereassmallerfirmsmustbecontenttooccupyperipheralniches.
Producersshareacommonunderstandingofhowfirmswillcompetewith one
anotherconcerning, that is, those aspects of the production process
that will be standardized versus those that can be manipulated by
managers. And what are the implications of these arguments for the
study of service work?
Inbrief,ratherthanviewingserviceasanabstractcommodity,weshould seek
to delineate the specific meaning it has for managers, workers, and
con-sumers. Such meanings, furthermore, must be situated in
relation to the his-tory and structure of the particular field
under consideration.Service Struggles in South AfricaTo illustrate
the utility of a Bourdieuian approach to studying service work, I
present evidence from one of my field studies. It was a case in
which ongoing
conflictoccurredbetweenworkersandmanagementoverthestatusofthe
tasksperformed.Eachsideadvancedclaimsastowhetherornotitwas
appropriate to label such tasks as customer service. But there was
no final recourse to an outside entity (such as the state or an
appropriate labor bureau) nor could either side mobilize sufficient
symbolic power to settle the issue once and for all. The result was
a stalemate and ongoing hostility between the two sides.The field
site was a large entertainment complex in the city of
Johannes-burg, South Africa. It contained a hotel, shopping mall,
casino, and several food courts. Fieldwork was conducted over the
course of two ethnographic stints, one in 2001-2002 (a 9-month
research project) and the other in 2006 (a 3-month site revisit).
As these dates indicate, all fieldwork was performed during South
Africas post-apartheid period (White rule ended with the 1994 by
Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Sallaz303electoral victory of the African National Congress, or
ANC, over the
incum-bentNationalParty).Theauthorwasgrantedaccesstothefieldsiteasan
officialinternofthecompany,calledhereinEmpowermentInc.,that
ownedthecomplex,calledhereinRainbowCity.(Becauseoperationof several
of the retail outlets and restaurants in the complex was outsourced
to other firms, the analysis herein is restricted to employees of
Empowerment Inc.; these workers constituted 80% of the workers
on-site at any given
time.)Severalcharacteristicsofthesite,firm,andworkforcearerelevantfor
understanding the subsequent struggles that emerged around the
classification of workers labor as a service job. The firm,
Empowerment Inc., had been in operation since the late 1970s. It
had operated resorts throughout rural South Africa during the
apartheid era, and most of the current managerial employees were
Whites who had been with the company for 10-plus years. (Blacks had
beeninformallybarredfrommanagerialpositionsduringapartheid,inline
with what was known as the color bar.) Following the end of White
rule, the firmhadbeenpermittedtocontinueoperationsinSouth
Africabutonlyon condition that it adhere to a strict plan for Black
economic
empowermentspecifically,anationwidesystemofnumericalquotasforhiringpreviously
disadvantagedindividualsintolow-levelpositionsthroughouttheorganiza-tion
(Webster & Omar, 2003). This category included all those
typically con-sidered service workers in the literature, such as
food servers (Paules, 1991), casino dealers (Goffman, 1982), and
cashiers (Smith, 1992).The work performed by these employees
certainly seemed to meet all the scope conditions for an
emotionally demanding service job as specified in the literature.
Workers engaged in face-to-face encounters (i.e., interactive
labor) with clients, and the emotional state of these clients was
considered by man-agement to be important. Diners, for instance,
were to leave the restaurants content, losing gamblers consoled,
and so on. And as a firm operating in a competitive urban
marketplace, Empowerment Inc. actively promoted in its marketing
material the idea that guests would have an unparalleled,
world-class leisure experience. Given such conditions, we would be
justified to say that the sociology of service work would predict
managers to require workers to perform customer service for
clients.But allow me to report the following empirical puzzle: This
prediction did not hold true. Managers did not ask workers to
perform service for clients. On the contrary, managers vehemently
denied that workers should play any sort of
roleintheprocessofcreatingforclientsanenjoyableexperience,whereas
workersactivelysoughttoclaimanidentityasaserviceworker.Whatis
interesting is the issue of what sort of stakes each side saw as
up-for-grabs in such symbolic struggles over the nature of service
as well as the strategies they by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012
wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 304Work and Occupations 37(3)used
to pursue these stakes. In short, the very definition and relevant
properties of service constituted an active battleground at Rainbow
City.Service Is Shit in South Africa: Managerial Mythology Laid
BareLet us start by considering managers. All top executives with
Empowerment
Inc.wereveteranWhiteemployeesofthecompanyandthushaddecades worth of
experience running leisure resorts in southern Africa during
apart-heid. Many looked back at this time as a golden age in which
the oversight of a leisure resort was relatively easy. On one hand,
the lack of state regulation allowed the firm to routinely
discriminate against Black staffa service
sec-torcounterparttotheracialFordismthatcharacterizedSouthAfrican
industrygenerally(Webster,2002).Ontheotherhand,thefirmregularly
recruited experienced professionals from Europe to manage its
properties. In
agivenresort,arenownedcheffromGermanymightheadthekitchen, whereas
an experienced croupier from London would direct the action on the
casino floor. Corporate executives trusted that these expats would
ensure the quality of goods and services. The firm, in short, had
no explicit service
phi-losophyorpolicies;itdecentralizedcustomerserviceroutinestoproperty-level
managers.Followingthefallofapartheid,newlaborlegislationspecifiedthatthe
general workforce and property-level management must be diversified
in line with a larger Black Economic Empowerment plan (Buhlungu,
2009). As for incumbent White staff, a few were promoted into the
ranks of corporate man-agement, a few were able to retain their
positions, but most resigned. At this same time (the mid-1990s),
Empowerment Inc. executives began a thorough review of corporate
policy and procedures regarding marketing issues. It was decided
that the company needed a new brand identity, and after several
days ofbrainstorming,executivescameupwithanewmotifemphasizingfun,
excitement, and festivities. A corporate mission statement was
drafted, con-taining a series of principles putting the guest at
the center of everything
theorganizationdoes.AttheRainbowCityResort,posterswereplaced
throughoutthebackofthehouseareas(suchasthecafeteria,nearthe
employee time clock, and in the break-room) extolling the virtues
of giving world-class service to guests.The executive managers I
interviewed and observed during my fieldwork appeared to have
completely bought into this new idea that customers emo-tions were
now something to be managed by the firm. They spoke of those who
came to the resort to gamble as depressed individuals who needed to
bedistractedandcheeredup.Theyspokematter-of-factlyaboutthenew by
Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Sallaz305imperative to provide the hotels guests with a world-class
leisure
experi-ence.Andtheyproudlydisplayedontheirdesksbronzeplaquesbearing
phrases such as The customer is always right.But beneath this
general rhetoric, there was something curious about how managers
went about creating a positive experience for guests: They believed
thatcustomerserviceonthepartofthefirmsfrontlineemployeeswasto play
no part in it. Consider the following quote from the manager of
Rainbow Citys slot machine division. He is describing a new plan to
generate enthu-siasm among gamblers at the casino:MGR: We got this
new promotion event planned, we call it Lucky Slot
Madness.Everyonewillbesittingthereplayingtheirmachines, when at
some point in the night there will be a great commotion and all the
lights on all the machines will start flashing. One by one, the
lights will go off until theres only one left on, and this will be
the winner. The lucky slot.JS: So whats the point of that? What do
they win?MGR:Ohsomethingsmall,justabottleofwineorsomething.The
important thing is that it will create a sense of excitement.As
this manager narrates an upcoming event, he illustrates that the
firm has dedicated significant energy to planning how to manipulate
the consumers emotions and overall experience. But notice too what
is absent from this nar-rative: workers. All the operators intended
to manipulate consumers (lights,
music,wine)areobjects,notpersons.Thisispuzzlinggiventhatworkers
saturate the complex and are an obvious conduit for facilitating
firmclient contact. Here though lies the rub: managers explicitly
removed customer ser-vice from the overall formula of
experience-production. The words, demeanor, and appearance of
workers were all to be neutralized, not accentuated.Managers
explained their denial of employees service potential in several
ways.MostwereessentialistargumentsconcerningtheinabilityofBlack
workers to provide quality customer service. For instance, and as
the com-panys operations director explained to me in an informal
conversation:TheAfricanmentalityisthattheydeservesomethingfornothing.
Theyve been a bartender for two years and expect to be promoted to
food and beverage manager. Back in the U.K., youll find an old man
whohasbeentendingbarfor20yearsandcangivegoodserviceto 400 people.
Here you can assign 400 Blacks to work a bar serving one person,
and theyll still find a way to muck it up. by Nicolas Diana on
October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 306Work and
Occupations 37(3)Another executive stated,If youre a Black guy
doing a service job, youre dreaming of being a manager in a big
office with nice carpet. Youre not thinking about the job at hand,
and youre definitely not thinking about the needs of the customer
standing there in front of you.The general accusation conveyed by
these quotes is one of a cultural incom-petence, induced by a lack
of patience and undue expectations. Several man-agers specifically
mentioned culture when I asked them directly why they dont ask
workers to perform customer service. Its culture, all the
obstacles, they just dont have the tools. Consider as well the
following statement, in which workers standards of cleanliness are
mocked:Well weve met our equity quotas, exceeded them actually. The
[pro-vincial regulators] are happy, as weve even got 30% of our
workers from a nearby squatter camp. You cant even imagine how
tough this hasbeen.Wegivethembrandnewwhitetuxedoshirts,andtheygo
home and wash them in the dirty little river. Now everyone is
wearing brown shirts! Just bloody brilliant.Another line of
argumentation specified that workers, even if they were
capableofprovidingqualityservice,wouldnotwantto.Blackworkers resent
having to do the service thing, one hotel executive stated,
Especially if the customer is White and wealthy. All sort of bad
associations are brought up. Here, the executive is referencing the
status order of apartheid, wherein
thoseclassifiedasBlackwereexpectedtoexhibitdeferencetoWhitesin
everyday interaction. It is important to note too that managers
claims regard-ing service expectations did not extend down to
customers themselves. It is true that clients of the Rainbow City
entertainment complex (the majority of whom were White) could no
longer expect Black workers to be completely servile in their
demeanors. But, on the other hand, many expressed frustra-tion that
workers were not encouraged to provide any sort of service at
all.The final result of managers myriad truth-claims regarding
workers
ser-viceabilitieswasanadamantdenialthatcustomerservicecanorshould
function as a means of product differentiation in the industry. For
instance, in an interview with the CEO of one of Empowerment Inc.s
rival companies, I had the following exchange: by Nicolas Diana on
October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from Sallaz307JS: So
what steps does your company take to get workers to provide good
customer service?CEO: [chuckling] Look, service in South Africa is
shit. Its as simple
asthat.Ofcourseweallhaveanimaginationthattherewouldbe ideal service
like there is in New York or Las Vegas.JS: And what does that mean,
ideal service?CEO: Where you sit down at say a blackjack table, and
within a min-ute,awaitresshascomeovertoyou,shesmiles,andtakesyour
order for a drink. Or when you get to the hotel reservation desk,
and the clerk greets you and makes conversation.AU: But those sort
of things, they dont happen here?CEO: No, and I cant see them
ever.To summarize the argument thus far: sociologists of work
predict that, in competitive industries, a positive consumer
experience will become a means
ofproductdifferentiation,whereasworkersservicewillbeapartofsuch
differentiationstrategies.Thisisastraightforwardandlogicalhypothesis,
one in accordance with basic economic principles. But my findings
from the
leisureindustryincontemporarySouthAfricapresentananomaly:They
validate the first part of this argument but not the second. The
leisure industry in Johannesburg is undoubtedly competitive. And
executives within the firm I studied have recently come to see a
positive guest experience as an essen-tial part of their marketing
plan. Today, they actively strategize ways to con-trol and
manipulate clients emotions. But managers refuse to acknowledge
worker service as a possible means for doing so. Interviewee and
interviewee voiced a fatalistic resignation to the fact that
service in South Africa is shit, to invoke the fecal metaphor
mentioned above. When pressed to justify this
argument,theyreferencedtheabilitiesanddesiresofworkers.Blacks,
theirargumentwent,wereunableand/orunwillingtoperformservicefor
clients.Workers themselves, however, had a different take.But We
Are Service Professionals! Workers
CounterclaimsDidmanagersargumentsaccuratelyreflectthecapacitiesanddesiresof
workers? Based on my cumulative fieldwork observations, I argue
not. On
repeatedoccasions,andinvariousforumsthroughouttheleisureresort,I
witnessed workers challenge managerial claims. Nor were these
isolated and idiosyncratic events, as these counterclaims were
patterned and displayed a by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012
wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 308Work and Occupations
37(3)definite logic. The goal of this section is to use Bourdieus
political sociology to illuminate and interpret these patterns. The
overall picture to emerge is of Rainbow City as a veritable
battleground for symbolic claims over the
mean-ingofseeminglycommonplacenotionssuchascustomersatisfaction,ser-vice
work, and professionalism.Management depicted workers as
constrained by various elements of their
culture.Thethreetropesmostcommonlyusedwerethatoftheuppity Black who
was too busy dreaming of an office job to concentrate on service,
the incompetent Black who lacked the tools to relate to the firms
respect-ableclientele,andtheangryBlackwhowouldbeoffendedifaskedto
prove service. In reality, though, most workers fit none of these
stereotypes. The 2,000-plus employees of Rainbow city were
primarily Black South Afri-cans, and they were diverse in terms of
gender, age, and prior work experi-ences. For many, it was their
first job, and some surely did lack the skills that
wouldbenecessaryforworld-classservice(suchasthenewrestaurant server
who was only partially fluent in English or the cocktail waitress
whose body type failed to meet managers expectations concerning
ideal standards
ofbeauty).Butfewworkersviewedserviceasinherentlydifficultor
demeaning. On the contrary, the typical worker with whom I
interacted was
opentotheideaofprovidingserviceandtoamoregeneralconceptionof
service
professionalism.Workersclaimstoaserviceidentityhadbothmaterialandidealbases.
For instance, one issue around which service disputes often
crystallized was the companys tipping policy. In the late 1990s,
Empowerment Inc. decided
tobantippingthroughoutallofitsSouthAfricanproperties.Signswere
posted notifying customers that they were not to offer gratuities
to workers. Today, if a worker does receive a tip, he or she is
required to hand it over to a supervisor, with the money then going
into the propertys general revenue account. Cameras and security
guards monitor workers to insure that they do not surreptitiously
keep a tip; workers found guilty of doing so are consid-ered guilty
of theft and could be dismissed.Not surprisingly, the no-tipping
policy was unpopular with workersand
customerstoo.Itwouldnotbeanunderstatementtosaythatbothgroups
thoroughly despised it. For example, I attended a monthly staff
meeting held in the large arena usually reserved for concerts and
boxing matches. During the question-and-answer period, a female
casino dealer stood up and asked the property manager: I just want
to know one thing. Where do our tips go? They should be mine! From
the staff came sounds of clapping and shouts of support: You go
girl, Uh-huh, you tell them. The manager responded by
takingthemicrophoneandexplainingtotheroomthattipincomeisquite by
Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Sallaz309volatile, whereas the companys flat wage provides a stable
income. Some days, workers make lots of tips but some days they
make hardly any. Nor, he explained, do workers now have to worry
about kissing up to people. For these reasons, the no-tip policy
was actually in workers best interest. The young woman was not
satisfied, however. She stepped back up to the micro-phone and
declared, But I am here to be a service professional. This policy
makes me unhappy, and if I am not happy then the guest is not
happy!This interaction, reported verbatim, illustrates well how
conflicts between management and workers over bread-and-butter
issues played out in relation to the issue of service. It may also
be considered a classic example of a
nomi-nationstruggleinsituthatis,aninterpersonaljousttoimposeabinding
definitiononanotherwiseunnamedphenomenon.Tostart,theworkeris making
a claim in which are linked a series of items. First, she has
expropri-atedandendorsedtheofficialcompanyrhetoric(expressedthroughoutthe
workplace) concerning the importance of customer satisfaction.
Clients are guests whose emotional happiness is integral to the
organizations suc-cess. In direct contrast to managerial thought,
which considers its own actions
asthesoleinstrumentforaffectingclients(throughmeanssuchasmusic,
contests, and alcohol), Suzanne is inserting into the equation a
new
(indepen-dent)variable:theserviceprovidedbyemployeessuchasherself.Inthis
context,goodservicecanbesaidtopossessapositiveordownstream modality
(Latour, 1987, p. 23) insofar as it is rhetorically framed as a
neces-sary prerequisite for the subsequent production of customer
satisfaction (If I am not happy, then the guest is not happy).But
Suzannes truth-claim concerning customer service can also be said
to possess an upstream modality. To take the claim seriously on its
own terms requires moving back in time, to reconsider the origins
of a corporate policy already in place. The companys practice of
prohibiting and confiscating tips makes her unhappy because it is
an unfair theft of what is rightfully hers. Her anger and
unhappiness are thus justified through reference to a series of
more
generalprinciplesofequity(Boltanski&Theverot,2006).Whocouldbe
cheerful and give good service when one is the victim of an ongoing
crime?AslogicallysoundasSuzannesargumentwas,itcouldnotbutfailto
prevail insofar as it rested on an assumption to which managerial
thought was hostile. This assumption was precisely that workers
emotional labor could
influencecustomersatisfaction.Managerspracticallogicassumedthatno
matter how hard a Black tried (if he or she tried at all), the
service provided
wouldbeofaninferior,ineffectual,andsulliedsort.Butitisimportantto
examine precisely how the property manager attempted to counter
Suzannes claim. It would have been entirely inappropriate to
articulate this racialized, by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012
wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 310Work and Occupations
37(3)stereotypical assumption publicly (thereby risking a
discrimination claim or
lawsuit).Instead,hesoughttocounterthetruthoftheupstreamclaim,the
one equating the no-tipping policy with theft. Far from being an
unwarranted act of larceny, the manager argued, the policy is
actually an act of benevo-lence. Because tip income fluctuates, the
company wants to make sure that workers are able to rely on a
guaranteed income source. Hence, they should not be unhappy or
upset about the policy. (Of course, workers were not
con-sultedaboutthispolicychangenorisitapparentwhytheycouldnotboth
receive a stable salary and accept tips.) It should also be pointed
out that the no-tipping policy was highly unpopular among clients.
On several occasions, I witnessed a gambler, on winning a large bet
at a roulette table, tell the deal-ing staff that he or she would
be happy to meet them down the road, at the petrol station, after
work. The underlying message was that a tip would be handed off in
a clandestine location, so that workers could be rewarded for the
good dealing service they had provided the
bettor.Inadditiontotipping,asecondcommonpointofcontentionbetween
managers and workers centered on what I came to label managements
Dis-neyhypocrisy.Illprovidesomebackground.Duringtheperiodinwhich
top management decided to implement a consistent, company-wide
service
philosophy,EmpowermentInc.establishedamultiyearcontractwiththe Walt
Disney Company. Disney advisors traveled to South Africa and
assisted with planning and theming the companys properties. They
also gave several presentations to the workforce at Rainbow City
about the importance of cus-tomer service. Although employees may
often view such seminars with
cyni-cism(Kunda,2006),workersatRainbowCityseemednottohaveviewed
them as corny or just company speak. On the contrary, they were
enthu-siastictohearabouttheDisneyservicephilosophy,andmanyappearedto
haveimbueditwithanemancipatorymeaning.Theyappreciatedhowit framed
employees as the companys most valuable asset as well as its
empha-sisonempoweringfrontlineworkerstotakeresponsibility,makeindepen-dentdecisions,andengageinpositive,respectfulinteractionswithclients.
For many workers, it was the first time they had ever heard such
rhetoric. It certainly had not been found in any workplaces
(service or otherwise) during apartheid.At the time of my
fieldwork, a full 2 years after the contract had ended, Rainbow
City employees still regularly referenced the Disney experience.
Itrepresentedapowerfulsymboloftheinconsistencybetweentheofficial
rhetoricofserviceandtherealityofmanagerialpracticeatRainbowCity.
Although many current workers had not been present at the original
presenta-tions by Disney consultants, there was another vehicle
through which Disney by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012
wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from Sallaz311memories were kept alive
among the workforce. For, as part of the contract with Disney,
Empowerment Inc. had allowed a group of around 20 Rainbow City
workers to perform internships with Disney at the companys
entertain-ment empire in southern Florida. These entailed spending
a year in the United States and working at a variety of service
jobs at the Magic Kingdom. The
ideaatthetime,asinterneesunderstoodit,wasthattheywouldacquire
hands-on experience with the Disney service philosophy and then
return to South Africa to assist with implementing it at Rainbow
City. And although
thismayevenhavebeentheoriginalintentionofthecompanyexecutives
whoinkedthedeal,workersweredisappointedtofindontheirreturnthat
property-levelmanagerswerenottoointerestedtohearabouttheDisney Way
let alone make major alterations in how they ran their
facility.Though disappointed, the former interns experienced a new
role and
new-foundstatusamongtheircoworkers.Fortheyconstitutedlivingproofthat
therewasnoinherentflawintheDisneyserviceprogramitdidexistin
concrete reality, in the United States. The fact that workers were
not treated asserviceprofessionalsinSouth
Africacouldthusbeattributedtoulterior
motivesonthepartofentrenchedmanagers.Ineffect,theDisneyinterns
becamepowerfulspokespersonsfortheworkforceasawhole.Theirindi-vidual
stories and complaints came to represent the hopes and frustrations
of all employees. For instance, when I first began fieldwork in
Rainbow Citys marketing department, workers repeatedly referenced
Disney as evidence of the companys hypocrisy. When I would inquire
further, they would tell me that I should go and talk to Nombuso, a
current employee in the hotels call center, because, as one worker
stated, she has been there and seen it with her own eyes. I was
eventually able to make my way down to the call
center,andarrangedtohavelunchwithNombusolaterthatday.Overour meal,
she told me her tale.They All Need to Go to Disney: Nombusos
StoryNombuso(apseudonym)is26yearsold.SheisfromSoweto(shortfor
southwest township), a large Black settlement of more than one
million peo-ple, not too far from the Rainbow City complex. Her
father had been a taxi
driverbeforepassingawayin1998.HermotherstilllivesinSowetoand makes
a decent living as a dressmaker. Nombuso has obtained a fairly high
degree of education. Because her parents had both kept steady work
during her childhood, they had been able to send her to a private
secondary school.
Shegraduatedin1995andwasacceptedintoa1-yearhotelmanagement course
in 1996 (as part of the first class that accepted Black students).
She completed the course with honors and in 1997 was hired to be
the assistant by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com
Downloaded from 312Work and Occupations 37(3)chef at a Japanese
restaurant in a suburban Johannesburg mall. After 6 months of
trying unsuccessfully to learn how to slice sushi, Nombusa received
a job offerfromalargehotelchainbasedinPretoria.Shetookthejobbutsoon
grew bored and dissatisfied, as she spent the majority of her time
doing rou-tine labor as a switchboard operator. This, she says, was
not what I went to school
for.ItwasatthistimethatNombusoregisteredwithastaffingagency.It
arranged for her an interview at the Rainbow City resort, and she
was offered a job in the marketing department in the spring of
1999. I was so
excitedyippee!thatwhentheycalledmeonFridaytooffermethejob,IsaidI
wanted to start that very next Monday. At first, she was put on the
switch-board again, receiving and directing calls, but soon her
portfolio of tasks was
expanded.Shehelpedtodesignorganizationalflowchartsforthehuman
resourcesdepartmentandreceivedsomebasicphotographylessonswhile
assisting with the design of marketing material. Then came the day
she saw a
noticeontheemployeebulletinboardadvertisingavailableinternshipsat
Disneyworld in Florida. She submitted her resume to the HR
coordinator and was one of four Rainbow City staff to be selected
for that round (she is not
surehowmanyhadappliedtotal).Theyleftinearly2001on1-year contracts.I
asked Nombuso why she thought that the company had been willing to
release her to do the Disney internship. She replied that the HR
coordinator here at Rainbow City had told her that the program was
being run through corporate and that they were sincere about
sending some promising staff per-sons over to the United States, to
learn Disneys techniques and philosophy
ofcustomerservice.Theyreallydidwanttobecomeknownasaglobal,
world-class service company.Nombuso recounted for me her first
reaction to the Disney system as well as her impression as to how
it compared with the companies shed worked for in South Africa.
First off, she answered, I have nothing negative to say about my
experience at Disneyworld. She spent her first 3 months learning
how to do event planning on a Disney cruise ship. She performed so
well at this job that her next assignment was as a bussing
coordinator at the Epcot
Centerthemepark.Nombusoischarismaticandgregarious,and6months
intoherinternship,shereceivedanawardforhercustomerserviceskills
(cast member recognition, as its called). By the time her
internship in
Flor-idaended,shewasherselftrainingnewinternsintheDisneyprinciplesof
good service.TheDisneystyleofmanagementhadbeenentirelynewtoher.They
actually encourage you to take initiative, to think independently.
Most of her by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com
Downloaded from
Sallaz313supervisorshadbeenyoung,likeher,andnotasconcernedwithpoweror
status. Furthermore, an open-door policy was the norm, which you
would never find here. And of course there were rules, but they
were more like guidance. I mean, this was a place where you could
be free! As a tour opera-tor, shed often had peoples lives in her
hands. This proved how much trust management placed in her and gave
her a great sense of responsibility and confidence. AtRainbow
City,incontrast, she had to run to management for clearance to do
anything. This difference, Nombusa says, was puzzling, because most
of her managers at Disney were White, but they didnt act as did the
managerial staff at Rainbow City, that is, very formally. In
general, she labels the latter as insecure and too concerned with
discipline.It was like I was living in a dream, because I had to
wake up. So Nom-buso described her return to South Africa. Even
though she had been assured that leaving to do the internship would
not negatively affect her employment with Empowerment Inc., she
discovered that her old job had been filled, and the company had
not arranged a new position for her. She talked to the mar-keting
department head, who explained to her that because of financial
pres-sures they could not create for her a new spot nor could they
credit her work history so as to grant her the small annual wage
increase that other employees
hadreceived.Fortheyearpriortoourinterview,shehadbeenfloating around
the resort, filling in for sick employees or on busy days. Even
worse than this lack of a clear role, nobody [in management] wanted
to talk to me [about the Disney experience]. Nombuso requested
meetings with the vari-ous department heads to describe in detail
how the service philosophy worked
inpracticeatDisneyworld.Moreimportant,shewantedtoshowthemthe formal
assessments she had brought back with her from Disney, attesting to
her excellent service skills. But no one would commit to a time to
meet with her, and to this day the assessments sit on a shelf in
her kitchen. This all has left Nombuso quite disenchanted: It is
the opposite of the open-door policy. They all need to go to
Disney.Unable to talk to her managers, Nombuso shared the story of
her experi-ence overseas with her coworkers. They were anxious to
hear any news at all about life outside of South Africa and
listened intensely to her tales about the culture of service
professionalism at Disney. Later, I spoke to other former Disney
interns at Rainbow City, all of whom reported both a lack of
interest from managers and high levels of interest from their
colleagues on returning from the United States. In the marketing
department today, Nombuso enjoys a special status as one who could
speak to managers with a degree of author-ity concerning their
hypocrisy in regard to service. And she readily accepts the role of
spokesperson, a representative who embodies and gives voice to by
Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from
314Work and Occupations 37(3)the discontent latent in the workforce
as a whole. Hence I, as were many new
employeesattheresort,wasadvisedtogoseeNombusotolearnabout Rainbow
Citys hypocrisy.Analysis and ImplicationsThis article commenced
with broad and all-too-brief overviews of both Pierre Bourdieus
theory and the emergent sociology of service work. We divided
Bourdieus work into broad phases: an initial ethnology of the
intransigence of habitus in the colonial labor market, a series of
empirical monographs on culture and stratification in France, and
finally, a public sociology in opposi-tion to global neoliberalism.
We then laid bare several key assumptions of the
serviceworkliterature:notably,thatgoodserviceisanunproblematic,
even a priori, category of thing and that managers in competitive
industries
willhaveaninterestinaskingworkerstoprovideit.Admittedly,bothof
thesesummariesareguiltyofoversimplification.Exceptionsandcounter-readings
could easily be found for every component of each. Nonetheless, I
judged it worthwhile to make such generalizations to expose
fruitful points of dialogue between the two theory/research
programs.The two theories were then taken into the field, as I
reported on a major
ethnographicprojectwithinaleisureresortinpostcolonialSouthAfrica.
Somewhat surprisingly, it was not Bourdieus well-worn concept of
habitus that proved most relevant for understanding the labor
regime found therein nor was it the service work literatures
overarching concern with emotional labor management. Rather, it was
Bourdieus theory of political representationand in particular the
notion of nomination struggles. For this was a workplace ripe with
ongoing struggles to define the very nature of service. During a
year of fieldwork at Rainbow City resort, I found that there was no
consensus that the labor performed by employees was service work
(and even though it met the basic definitional standards found in
the literature, such as face-to-face
contactwithclients).Workerssoughtthelabelserviceprofessionaland,
following a presentation by Disney consultants, actively promoted
the idea of a customer-centric organizational philosophy.
Management, however, sought to remove workers from the customer
service equation. They defined work-ers as background equipment,
more akin to manual laborers than to qualified service
professionals.Symbolic struggles such as these are not exceptional
and inconsequential;
theycanhaveimportantmaterialeffects.Forinstance,workersatRainbow
City strove to constitute themselves as service workers in order to
reform the
companystippingpolicy.Buttheyalso,asNombusosstoryillustrated, by
Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Sallaz315recognize that service worker is a title that carries at
least some connotations ofhonorandresponsibility.
Tonameanactivityaserviceistoattachtoita series of other claims,
such as respectful treatment of the workers providing it,
professionalism, autonomy, and a concern for the emotional
well-being of both worker and client. And to deny that a form of
work is service is to repudiate such claims. As a principle, we as
researchers should be on guard against pre-establishing a
definition of service work. Such premature naturalization may be
warranted but never at the risk of being blind to the very real
symbolic bat-tlesthatmayoccuroverhowworkandservicearedefinedand
categorized.Such classification struggles can themselves by
classified. At one extreme are informal, interpersonal disputes
over character and identity, the
paradig-maticexamplebeingthatofaninsultshoutedintheheatofthemoment
(Youre an idiot!). At the other extreme is the power of the modern
state to
conferlegitimatetitles.ThecurrentdebateintheUnitedStatesaboutthe
statusofhomehealthcareworkersillustrateswellthisfact,asitfeatures
social movements, employers, unions, and other groups lobbying to
have this
formoflaborclassified(ornot)asformalemployment.Thestate,asthe
holder of a monopoly of symbolic power, represents the ultimate
arbiter of struggles to name and classify.The conflict at Rainbow
City over whether or not employees could claim
thetitleofserviceworkersdidnotfiteitheroftheseextremepositions.
Workers claims were not spontaneous or individual outbursts. By the
time of my arrival, they had been somewhat institutionalized, with
workers regularly
usingphrasessuchasIamaserviceprofessionalduringconflictswith
managementandwiththeemergenceofparticularspokespersons(suchas
Nombuso)representingthewidespreaddiscontentamongworkers.Buton
theotherhand,therewasnoobviousauthoritybeyondtheworkplaceto which
one side or the other could turn for final resolution of the
dispute. The
stateinSouthAfricadoesmakeadistinctionbetweenmanufacturingand
service workers but only for the purpose of collecting statistical
information on the economy. No worker I encountered was aware of
these governmental
statisticsnordoesthestateusethisclassificatorysystemtoconferspecial
rights on certain categories of workers (Seidman, 2008).
Institutionalized yet lacking a final arbiter, symbolic struggles
over service were at a stalemate.Although neither side could
declare a final victory, the balance of forces undoubtedly favored
management, which resolutely refused to label or treat the work of
workers as customer service. Rainbow City employees were part
oftheCongressofSouth AfricanTradeUnions,thecountryslaborunion
federation, but none of the micro-political contestations
documented herein by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012
wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 316Work and Occupations
37(3)fellwithintheambitoftheformalprocessofcontractnegotiations
andgrievanceprocedures(Wood&Psoulis,2001).Informally,workers
could and did protest, but they were unable to change any of the
policies that would have afforded them treatment as service
professionals. As
sociolo-gists,wecannotoverlooksuchsymbolicstrugglesnordismissthemas
secondary to more material issues. Definitional disputes over
service provide a window into the larger political economy of
post-apartheid South Africa. By treating them as a worthwhile
analytical object, we may observe linkages between macro-level
processes (such as new employment equity laws) and micro-level ones
(such as the everyday experience of employees). In short, a
Bourdieuian approach to service work requires that we move from
unreflec-tive representations of labor to careful study of labors
of representation.AcknowledgmentsFor taking the time to provide
valuable comments and ideas on this articleand for
inspiringhimtofinallyfinishittheauthorthanksKatherineChen,Marek
Korczynski, Robin Leidner, Steve Lopez, Sean ORiain, and Steven
Vallas.Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared
no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship
and/or publication of this article.FundingThe research on which
this article is based was supported by grants from the National
Science Foundation and the Social Science Research
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