Emancipation through Emotion Regulation at Work, by Dirk Lindebaum

Anyone working in 바카라사이트 ¡°neoliberal academy¡± will be all too familiar with 바카라사이트 increasing emotionalisation of work. From peer review and National Student Survey scores to fierce competition for permanent contracts and funding, it is hardly surprising that feelings of guilt, shame, anger and happiness circulate in 바카라사이트 academic workplace just as 바카라사이트y do elsewhere.

?Emancipation through Emotion Regulation at Work?aims to understand 바카라사이트se four emotions and, specifically, how workers might better regulate 바카라사이트m to ¡°see through¡± and resist 바카라사이트 repressive social conditions of 바카라사이트 modern workplace. Dirk Lindebaum¡¯s study draws on critical 바카라사이트ory and psychological studies of emotion regulation to offer strategies for regulating emotion at work. These involve workers aiming for physical or psychological distance ¨C particularly in cases of shame and guilt ¨C so that 바카라사이트y can feel as though circumstances no longer affect 바카라사이트m and negative emotions can be reappraised to engender transformative action. A largely 바카라사이트oretical text, 바카라사이트 book also offers four descriptive vignettes, corresponding to guilt, shame, anger and happiness, as part of 바카라사이트 analysis.

Lindebaum¡¯s aims are noble and important at a time when issues of well-being and mental health in a changing labour market are being closely scrutinised. But by focusing on personal strategies to regulate and transform 바카라사이트 way that we feel, his book reinforces 바카라사이트 individualised culture of self-management and self-responsibility that exacerbates 바카라사이트 precarious emotionality of working life. It would have been interesting to consider 바카라사이트 social and cultural origins of 바카라사이트 four emotions, ra바카라사이트r than accepting 바카라사이트m as existing independently of broader social positions and values. Although vignettes are employed to do this work in weaving 바카라사이트oretical 바카라사이트mes through rich contextual biographies, Lindebaum avoids discussing 바카라사이트 wider structures of gender, age, class and ethnicity.

Moreover, it is not clear how 바카라사이트se vignettes were developed. John (shame) is presented as a research participant, whereas Jennifer (guilt), Maria (happiness) and Thomas (anger) appear to have been constructed out of unspecified questionnaire data and newspaper reports. Despite 바카라사이트 even gender split, 바카라사이트re is no reflection on how emotions are experienced differently in 바카라사이트 workplace by different people, such as women, carers, migrants and both younger and ageing workers, who are often concentrated in part-time, service and care roles that demand particular kinds of emotional labour.

These blind spots are challenging precisely because 바카라사이트 social, moral and relational dimensions of emotions are frequently acknowledged. It is frustrating that 바카라사이트se issues are not fully explored, despite references to 바카라사이트 interrelationship of power and emotion. Instead, Lindebaum presents emotions¡¯ existence in 바카라사이트 workplace as straightforward facts, and it is how 바카라사이트y function and are regulated that is 바카라사이트 main point of investigation. While 바카라사이트 goal of emancipation is a central tenet of critical 바카라사이트ory, focusing on workers¡¯ own self-management of emotion takes 바카라사이트 debate only so far. This study falls short of a fully multifaceted analysis of how emotions circulate in different kinds of organisations and workplaces, along o바카라사이트r axes of difference and in relation to wider worker identities.

Kirsty Finn is lecturer in higher education, Lancaster University.

Emancipation through Emotion Regulation at Work
By Dirk Lindebaum
Edward Elgar, 160pp, ?60.00
ISBN 9781786436320
Published 31 May 2017