Labor, Emotions And Social Structuration In Argentina

Abstract

This paper sums up –in a cross-sectional perspective –three research studies concerning different work-related experiences in Argentina, involving call centers, social program beneficiaries and urban waste collectors. We discuss a particular dimension of certain processes related to transformations in labor to understand the role of emotions in the current processes of configuration of social relations. The methodology employed is predominantly qualitative: this paper focuses the analysis on the information gathered through in-depth interviews, from which it offers excerpts of narratives by call-center workers, unemployed trainees at the job training centers and female waste collectors. From three different perspectives upon the complex labor relations in Argentina –as a possible stage in the current transformation of the labor world –we show how a) socially constructed fear organizes perceptions and structures “correct ways of feeling” to guarantee not only the inexistence of conflict, but enormous profit rates for call centers; b) the “embodiment” of workers’ faces is located at the core of a business’s presentation, as a human ability to be valued and regulated for social program beneficiaries; and c) the “sensibility of disposable people” displays the way a particular reality becomes unquestionable, favoring a state of occupational disposability, for urban waste collectors. We state that these changes in the labor world show particular ways of managing emotions, becoming an axis of the “political economy of morals” at the current stage of expansion of capitalist social relationships.