China Social Science Review

No.3, 2022

“Specialized Emotional Labor” in a Jurisdictional Perspective

(Abstract)

Su Yihui

Since the 1970s, with the transformation of the industrial structure and the constant development of the division of labor, workers have entered the service sector in ever greater numbers. The labor they perform is dichotomous, encompassing both the “specialized” nature of the evolving division of labor and the “emotional/affective” nature of meeting customer needs. However, the relationship between this duality cannot be adequately explained by either the “emotional labor” research perspective or the “specialized research” framework. The theoretical framework of specialized emotional labor, which integrates gender labor studies and the study of occupational sociology, can expand the existing studies of emotional labor and specialization by analyzing the boundaries and relationships between specialization and emotion/affectivity in the service sector from a jurisdictional perspective. This expansion is manifested in two ways: firstly, in a macro-institutional examination of the way the dual jurisdictions of “specialized” and “emotional/affective” are shaped by external forces such as the state and the market, and secondly, in an examination of the internal micro-level interaction of labor and external forces in relation to the definition of the dual jurisdictional boundaries.