Working Bodies
Interactive Service Employment and Workplace Identities
IJURR Studies in Urban and Social Change Book Series

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Language: English
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Working bodies: interactive service employment and workplace identities
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284 p. · 15.5x23.1 cm · Paperback

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Working bodies: interactive service employment and workplace identities
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288 p. · 16x23.7 cm · Hardback
Through a series of case studies of low-status interactive and embodied servicing work, Working Bodies examines the theoretical and empirical nature of the shift to embodied work in service-dominated economies.
  • Defines ?body work? to include the work by service sector employees on their own bodies and on the bodies of others
  • Sets UK case studies in the context of global patterns of economic change
  • Explores the consequences of growing polarization in the service sector
  • Draws on geography, sociology, anthropology, labour market studies, and feminist scholarship

List of Illustrations vi

Series Editors’ Preface vii

Preface and Acknowledgements viii

1 Service Employment and the Commoditization of the Body 1

Part I Locating Service Work 23

2 The Rise of the Service Economy 25

3 Thinking Through Embodiment: Explaining Interactive Service Employment 49

Part II High-Touch Servicing Work in Private and Public Spaces 77

4 Up Close and Personal: Intimate Work in the Home 79

5 Selling Bodies I: Sex Work 101

6 Selling Bodies II: Masculine Strength and Licensed Violence 129

Part III High-Touch Servicing Work in Specialist Spaces 159

7 Bodies in Sickness and in Health: Care Work and Beauty Work 161

8 Warm Bodies: Doing Deference in Routine Interactive Work 191

9 Conclusions: Bodies in Place 212

References 229

Index 256

Linda McDowell is Professor of Human Geography and Director of the Graduate School of Geography at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St. John's College, where she is also Director of the Research Centre. Widely published, McDowell's books include Capital Culture: Gender at Work in the City (1997), Redundant Masculinities? Employment Change and White Working Class Youth (2003) and Hard Labour (2005).