Sublime

An inspiration engine for ideas

AllPeopleCollectionsArticlesAudioBooksFilesHighlightsImagesLinksNotesTextTweetsVideosSocial

These acts of re-labelling are often inspired by the work of sociologist Arlie Hochschild. Hochschild’s 1983 The Managed Heart described how certain jobs involve the management of a worker’s own internal emotional states.

Amelia Horgan • Lost in Work: Escaping Capitalism (Outspoken by Pluto)

Forced to Care

Anne Helen Petersen annehelen.substack.com

Millions of people — and white people in particular — would rather endure physical isolation, generalized loneliness, caregiving exhaustion, and financial precarity than relinquish some of their societal power. That’s a far less optimistic foundational myth than individualism. But it’s a far more honest one.

The Dark Heart of Individualism

The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling

Arlie Russell Hochschild

amazon.com

Cover of The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling

I want to drill down on one aspect of the intro, too, because I think it’s essential: how has care “curdled,” for lack of a better word, in our minds? And what have been the implications of that degradation?

Definitely curdled. When I say the word “care” I think it often brings to mind the smell of diapers or that unpleasant combo of urine and... See more

Anne Helen Petersen • "I Went Into Motherhood Determined Not to Lose Myself in It."

If you think about it, this work of caring for our children as nannies, or our aging parents as homecare workers, is some of the most profound and important work in our lives. We call it the work that makes everything else possible, because it makes it possible for all of us to go out and do what we do every day, knowing that some of the most... See more

Krista Tippett • Ai-jen Poo — This Is Our (Caring) Revolution | The On Being Project

emotional labor.* This labor requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others—in this case, the sense of being cared for in a convivial and safe place. This kind of labor calls for a coordination of mind and feeling, and it sometimes draws on a source of self

Arlie Russell Hochschild • The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling

Tillie Olsen wrote: “In the twenty years I bore and reared my children . . . the simplest circumstances for creation did not exist.” It was a physical problem, a time problem; it was also a question of selfhood. “The obligation to be physically attractive and patient and nurturing and docile and sensitive and deferential . . . contradicts and must