Service Labor and Symbolic Power- On Putting Bourdieu to Work

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http://wox.sagepub.com/ Work and Occupations http://wox.sagepub.com/content/37/3/295 The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/0730888410373076 2010 37: 295 Work and Occupations Jeffrey J. Sallaz Service Labor and Symbolic Power : On Putting Bourdieu to Work Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com can be found at: Work and Occupations Additional services and information for http://wox.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts: http://wox.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions: http://wox.sagepub.com/content/37/3/295.refs.html Citations: What is This? - Aug 5, 2010 Version of Record >> by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from

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servicios, poder simbolico

Transcript of Service Labor and Symbolic Power- On Putting Bourdieu to Work

http://wox.sagepub.com/Work and Occupationshttp://wox.sagepub.com/content/37/3/295The online version of this article can be found at:DOI: 10.1177/0730888410373076 2010 37: 295 Work and OccupationsJeffrey J. SallazService Labor and Symbolic Power : On Putting Bourdieu to WorkPublished by:http://www.sagepublications.com can be found at: Work and Occupations Additional services and information for http://wox.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts: http://wox.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions: http://wox.sagepub.com/content/37/3/295.refs.html Citations: What is This?- Aug 5, 2010 Version of Record>> by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from Work and Occupations37(3) 295 319 The Author(s) 2010Reprints and permission: http://www. sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/0730888410373076http://wox.sagepub.comService Labor and Symbolic Power: On Putting Bourdieu to WorkJeffrey J. Sallaz1AbstractThesubfieldthatisthesociologyofservicelaborcontinuestogenerate vibrant internal dialogue. It was the authors original intent to push forward the frontier of theory within this field, by performing an ethnography of service work in a non-American context (that of post-apartheid South Africa). Once in the field, however, he found himself moving backward as he was forced to problematize basic assumptions concerning the very category of service. In brief, the author discovered that managers in a competitive tourism industry refusedtolabeltheiremployeesinteractivelaborasservice,whereas workers themselves actively advocated for such a designation. To document the interplay between material and symbolic politics of production, the author turnedtotheworkofPierreBourdieuespeciallyhistheoryofpolitical representation and the accompanying concept of nomination struggles.Keywordsservice work, Bourdieu, labor, South AfricaThe most resolutely objectivist theory must take account of agents representa-tion of the social world and . . . thereby to the very construction of this world, via the labour of representation (in all senses of the term) that they continually perform.Bourdieu (1999a, p. 234)1University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USACorresponding Author:Jeffrey J. Sallaz, PO Box 210027, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA Email: [email protected] by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 296Work and Occupations 37(3)The service occupations today saturate our lifeworlds. They pour our lattes, pluck our eyebrows, empty our bedpans. Nor can there can be any ambiguity about the effect on sociological scholarship of this shift from an old, manu-facturing-based economy to a new service society. The result has been a veri-tableparadigmshiftinthesociologyofwork.Ethnographersintenton documenting the organization of the labor process no longer trudge off to the factory but, rather, to the local fast-food franchise. Scholars of labor move-ments increasingly focus their gaze not on the bureaucratic unions that long dominated heavyindustriesandcrafts buton thesocialmovement union-ism that holds hope for organizing low-wage service workers (Fantasia & Voss, 2004; Lopez, 2004; Milkman, 2006). Also, the past two decades have witnessed a proliferation of new theoretical frameworks for making sense of thespecificitiesofservicework(MacDonald&Korczynski,2009).Emo-tionallabor,carework,andthree-wayinterestallianceareallconceptsof recent origin, and all represent significant additions to the theoretical toolkit passed down from classic studies of industrial sociology.During the same period in which the sociology of work has been shaken upthecanonofsociologicaltheoryinAmericaalsohasbeen.Parsonian structural functionalism fell from favor during the late 1960s and 1970s, in the face of both a radical resurgence of Marxist sociology and the emergence ofnewtheoriescenteringthelivedexperienceofwomen,minorities,and othersubalterns(Gouldner,1970).Thepasttwodecades,meanwhile,has witnessed a growing interest among American sociologists in the sociologi-calresearchprogrampioneeredbythelatePierreBourdieu(Emirbayer& Johnson,2008). Althoughsurprisinginthesensethat Americansociology has historically eschewed continental theory, Bourdieus theory represents a powerful synthesis of the sociologies of Karl Marx (in its emphasis on power and domination), Emile Durkheim (in its attention to the interplay between cultural categories and social structure), and Max Weber (in its theorization of legitimacy as an institutional process). Bourdieu is now one of the most cited theorists in top American sociology journals (Sallaz & Zavisca, 2008).Given these trends, it would be fair to say that the ground is ripe for dialogue betweenthesetwoemergentfields.Infact,sociologistsofworkhavethor-oughly explored at least one of Bourdieus key ideas: that of the habitus, the embodied sens of reality through which social agents perceive and act on the world. Desmond (2007), for instance, documented how the U.S. Forest Service manages its labor supply by manipulating young mens rural-masucline habi-tus.Scholarsofserviceandcultureindustrieshaveinturnexaminedhow employers, to ensure the performance of aesthetic labor, actively encourage (especiallyfemale)workerstocultivateparticularembodieddispositions by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from Sallaz297(Dean,2005;Hanser,2008;Pettinger,2005;Warhurst&Nickson,2007; Williams & Connell, in press; Wissinger, 2009; Witz, Warhurst, & Nickson, 2003). As illustrated by these studies, the value of the habitus concept is that itexpandsourpurviewbeyondthelaborprocess,ontothelargerfieldof experiences and meanings that workers bring with them into the workplace.What though of the other key elements of Bourdieus theory? Do they also hold potential for advancing our understanding of the dynamics of contem-porary service work? This article considers the relevance of Bourdieus polit-ical sociology for elucidating new objects of inquiry at the point of production. It commences, in a section called Labor and Representation, by reviewing the corpus of Bourdieus writings to see how he analyzed the subject of labor. Over the course of his career, I conclude, Bourdieu moved away from argu-ments about the habitus and work organization to establish the principles of ageneralsociologyofsymbolicpower. Atthispoint,thearticlecritically interrogates three key assumptions of the sociology of service work through thelensofBourdieuspolitical-culturalsociology.Doingsoprovidesa framework for analyzing the actors and strategies involved with the symbolic strugglesthatundergirdeventhemostbasicbread-and-butterissuesat work.The second half of the article shows how Bourdieus political sociology may be put to work. It presents qualitative data drawn from my own ethno-graphic study of labor inside a large entertainment complex in contemporary South Africa. It was during such fieldwork that I discovered a puzzle. Rather thanseekingtoencourageemotionallabor,managersinthiscompetitive tourism industry refused to label employees interactive work as service. Inturn,workersactivelyadvocatedforsuchadesignation.Suchstruggles over the definition of workers labor were not peripheral to, but rather were key elements of, the larger production regime. We thus conclude by elaborat-ingontherelevanceforthesociologyofworkofoneofBourdieuskey ideas: that of the nomination struggle in situ.Labor and RepresentationFrom Earthly Labor to Symbolic Power:TheTrajectory of Pierre BourdieuHow can the theory of Pierre Bourdieu be used to advance our understanding of service labor? Insofar as Bourdieu himself never explicitly addressed the subject, we are required to do a brief excavation of his overall body of work. by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 298Work and Occupations 37(3)Whatfollowshereismyowninterpretationofthiscorpus,basedonclose reading of all available English translations of his books and articles. I argue that,forourpurposes,thisbodyofworkcanbedividedintothreephases: first,earlyethnologicalstudiesofworkinthecolonialcontext(especially TravailetTravailleurs en Algrie, published inEnglish as Algeria1960 in 1979); second, a series of monographs on culture and fields in modern France (Distinctionin1984,representingthecrowningachievement);andthird,a public sociological critique of globalization and neoliberalism (works such asFiringBackin2003).Theoverallpicturetoemergeisofashiftfrom analysis of work in its local context to that of culture in a global context.Bourdieus first major research project was an ethnological study of the rural Algerian people known as the Kabyle. They lived, Bourdieu argued, in an undifferentiated social space without autonomous fields such as universi-ties and labor markets (Bourdieu, 1977). As a consequence, their schemes of perception,orhabitus,weretraditional;theywereattunedtothepastand generatedintheKabylepeopleadesiretoconformtoinheritedmodels (Bourdieu, 1979, p. 9). On a day-to-day basis, this meant that labor (of which the tasks of farming were primary) was performed as it had been for centuries before. But this system was disrupted by French colonization. Forced off the land, the peasant migrated to the city where his traditional habitus proved to be ill equipped for a modern economy. He was unable to imagine his labor power as a commodity to be sold at market nor could he accumulate savings to plan for periods of unemployment. Like the proverbial fish out of water, the newly urbanized peasant fell into a traditionalism of despair.After returning from Algeria, Bourdieu began a series of studies of mod-ern France as an example of what he called a differentiated society, that is, asocialworldcharacterizedbymultiplefieldsandspeciesofcapital(cul-tural, economic, etc.). Dispositions still mattered. For instance, in Distinction (Bourdieu, 1984), his monumental study of consumption and taste, Bourdieu depicted modern France not as a static social order oriented toward fidelity to the past but as a dynamic game of culture. Artists continually vie to outdo one anotherwithformalinnovations,resultinginapermanentrevolutionof cultural forms. But to enter this game in the first place, one must have expe-riencedaparticularformofsocialization:achildhoodinwhichonewas assured of having ones basic material needs met. Working-class children, in contrast, endure scarcity and hardship, resulting in a taste for necessity that hinderstheirabilitytoplaythegamesofculturefoundinthevariouselite fields.In general, however, fields are autonomous spaces, such that the cultural games played within them are rarely overdetermined by material constraints. by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from Sallaz299In fact, the work of artists, politicians, and other professionals is character-ized by nuanced strategies of framing, categorizing, and classifying symbols. It was one of Bourdieus enduring contributions to elucidate these strategies and the principles underling themto expose, that is, a modern economy of symbolicpower.Curiouslythough,theworldofworkforthemostpart escapedhisgaze.Hisempiricalstudiesfocusedontheeducationsystem (Bourdieu&Passeron,1979),thepoliticalfield(Bourdieu,1996),theart world (Bourdieu, 1993), and housing markets (Bourdieu, 2005). It was not until the end of his career that he would return, if but briefly, to the subject of work.In what I label Bourdieus third phase, he assumed the role of public intel-lectual to critique the global spread of neoliberal ideology. Emanating from the United States, this ideology demands the simultaneous withdrawal of the state from the realm of the social and the ascendency of market forces as the ultimate arbitrator of value and exchange (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1999). In works such as The Weight of the World (Bourdieu, 1999b), Bourdieu specu-lated as to how neoliberalism affects workers, trade unions, and the working class as whole. Once more he invoked his dispositional theory, now to explain howworkersrespondtotheeconomicprecariousnessproducedby neoliberalism:Insecurity acts directly on those it touches (and whom it renders inca-pableofmobilizingthemselves)andindirectlyonalltheothers, throughthefearitarouses...[Theseare]theprerequisitesforan increasingly successful exploitation of these submissive dispositions produced by insecurity. (Bourdieu, 1998b, pp. 82-83)Asthissummaryshows,Bourdieuswork,althoughitneglectstoconsider explicitlythestructuringofservicelabor,isrepletewithpossiblelinesof inquiry.A Sociology of Representation: Nomination Struggles at WorkThis article expounds on one of Bourdieus key theoretical contributions: his analysis of the symbolic politics of nomination struggles. There is of course anexcellentbranchofresearchexamininghowworkplacescanbesitesof contention over meanings, identity, and dignity (Hodson, 2001; Lopez, 2006; Sherman, 2010; Vallas, 2006). Room exists, however, to flesh out in full how Bourdieus work on symbolic representation allows us to analyze the work-place as a site of micro-political contestation over the existence and meaning by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 300Work and Occupations 37(3)of service work. In brief, I argue that scholars too readily take for granted the existence of service work as a category of analysis. They prematurely black box the notion, thereby neglecting to consider that the very concept can be a stake of contestation on the shop floor.To elaborate, the emergent sociology of service work makes three assump-tions that are problematic from a Bourdieuian perspective. First, that service work (or some similar term) is a self-evident concept that can be defined a priori by the analyst. The typical work in the field begins by offering a new labelanddefinitionforthephenomenonunderconsideration.Hochschild (1985),forinstance,introducesthetermemotionallaboranddefinesitas work in which management attempts to control a customers feelings by con-trolling a workers emotional displays. Leidner (1993) in turn uses the term interactive labor to denote all employment in which workers have face-to-faceorvoice-to-voicecontactwithclients.Eachthenproceedsfromtheir initialdefinition,throughaseriesofmodalities(i.e.,logicaloperatorsthat assume the validity of the initial premise or concept; see Latour, 1987), and onto a set of empirical conclusions.Bourdieu, in contrast, argued that there may occur definitional struggles to establish wherein lie the boundaries between formal work and other forms of labor. Thetaskofthesociologistishencetoobjectifyobjectification:to takeasonesdatathehistorybehindanygivensystemofclassifications (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 7). In Practical Reason (1998b), he gives the example of an attempt by altar boys in the Catholic Church to form a union. The courts denied their claim, arguing that a church is not to be considered a business entity nor are those who labor inside it to be thought of as employees. And in the United States, there is ongoing debate as to the legal status of home health careaides.Currentlytheyareclassifiedascompanions,notemployees, andsoareeligibleforneitherprotectionssuchasthoseprovidedbymini-mum wage legislation nor benefits such as overtime pay. As these examples demonstrate, work can be a stake in struggles to mobilize symbolic power. Actors will seek to grant or deny to a particular activity the title of work: abeing-perceivedguaranteedasaright(Bourdieu,1999a,p.239).By implication, just as the work/nonwork boundary can constitute a site of strug-gle so too may the work/service work boundary (Sherman, 2005). When does a form of labor constitute service? When will key actors (especially work-ersandmanagement)seektoadvance,challenge,ordefendsuchclaims? Such questions lead to our next extension.A second common claim made by sociologists of work is that service will representanadditionaldemandimposedbymanagementonworkers.All formsoflabor,thisreasoninggoes,willinvolvesomenoninteractive by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from Sallaz301duties. Both forklift drivers and flight attendants transport heavy carts up and down aisles. Both chemists and barristas pour hot liquid from one flask into another. Service workers, however, face an additional layer of responsibility: that of managing their emotional expressions so as to generate in customers anappropriatefeelingstate.TheclassicexampleisHochschilds(1985) comparisonofan18th-centurychildfactorylaborerwithamodernflight attendant. The former was likely estranged from his body insofar as his mus-cles and tendons were gradually worn down to produce profit for someone else. The boys emotions, however, were safely his own. The flight attendant, in contrast, sells not only her physical labor power but also her capacity to engageinemotionallabor.Ascapitalismsteadilypullsemotionsintothe realmofcommodityproductionandcirculation(whatHochschildcallsa transmutation of emotion systems), service workers are at hazard for not simply physical alienation but emotional alienation as well (Grant, Morales, & Sallaz, 2009).When viewing work through a Bourdieuian lens, service appears not as an additional claim placed on workers but as a potential counterclaim to be made by workers. Symbolic acts of nominationthat is, moves to classify an objectasacertainsortofthingarealsoalwaysactsofclaimmaking (Bowker&Star,2000).Bylobbyingthegovernmenttolabelthelaborof home health care workers as formal employment, advocates seek to guar-anteetheseworkersanarrayofrightsandmaterialbenefits,rangingfrom protectionagainstdiscriminationtosocialsecurityeligibility.Butcanthe sameholdforachievingtheofficiallabelofaserviceworker? Although stateagenciessuchastheU.S.BureauofLaborStatisticsuseavarietyof schemata for classifying different forms of work, regulatory systems rarely draw a significant distinction between manufacturing and service jobs for the purposeofdeterminingrightsandbenefits.Nonetheless,thisdoesnotrule out the possibility that at the level of the individual enterprise or workplace, symbolic struggles (with very real stakes) may take place over the service worklabel.Buttoanalyzesuchmicro-politicalstrugglesrequiresthatwe consider as well the issue of managerial action within economic fields.Thisbringsustoathirdextensionthatcanbebroughtaboutbya Bourdieuianperspective. Thisoneproblematizestheassumptionthatdeci-sionmakerswithinafirm,whenplanningworkroutinesandrequirements regarding service, operate in line with a basic economic logic of product differentiation. The various strands of scholarship on service work are here in agreementthatcompetitionwillbegetademandforhigh-qualitycustomer service. Industries in which some entity possesses a monopoly on the goods orservicewillprovidemanagerswithlittleincentivetoinduceaservice by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 302Work and Occupations 37(3)orientation in workers. Consumers are a captive market, whereas training and monitoring costs for emotional labor are not negligible. The paradigmatic example is the government post office, universally reviled for its long lines and its workers surly demeanors. In contrast, competitive industries should use quality service as a means of product differentiation. If consumers have a choice as to where to purchase an item or service, all else (especially price) beingequal,theywillchoosethefirmthatoffersthemthemostpleasant experience.ButBourdieus(2005)ownworkonthecontemporaryeconomyargues thatindustriesresemblelesscompetitivefreemarketsthancomplementary fields of production. Dovetailing with recent approaches in economic sociol-ogy(Fligstein,2002;Podolny,2008),Bourdieu(2005)depictedeconomic fields as stable structures wherein dominant firms establish the rules of the game,whereassmallerfirmsmustbecontenttooccupyperipheralniches. Producersshareacommonunderstandingofhowfirmswillcompetewith one anotherconcerning, that is, those aspects of the production process that will be standardized versus those that can be manipulated by managers. And what are the implications of these arguments for the study of service work? Inbrief,ratherthanviewingserviceasanabstractcommodity,weshould seek to delineate the specific meaning it has for managers, workers, and con-sumers. Such meanings, furthermore, must be situated in relation to the his-tory and structure of the particular field under consideration.Service Struggles in South AfricaTo illustrate the utility of a Bourdieuian approach to studying service work, I present evidence from one of my field studies. It was a case in which ongoing conflictoccurredbetweenworkersandmanagementoverthestatusofthe tasksperformed.Eachsideadvancedclaimsastowhetherornotitwas appropriate to label such tasks as customer service. But there was no final recourse to an outside entity (such as the state or an appropriate labor bureau) nor could either side mobilize sufficient symbolic power to settle the issue once and for all. The result was a stalemate and ongoing hostility between the two sides.The field site was a large entertainment complex in the city of Johannes-burg, South Africa. It contained a hotel, shopping mall, casino, and several food courts. Fieldwork was conducted over the course of two ethnographic stints, one in 2001-2002 (a 9-month research project) and the other in 2006 (a 3-month site revisit). As these dates indicate, all fieldwork was performed during South Africas post-apartheid period (White rule ended with the 1994 by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from Sallaz303electoral victory of the African National Congress, or ANC, over the incum-bentNationalParty).Theauthorwasgrantedaccesstothefieldsiteasan officialinternofthecompany,calledhereinEmpowermentInc.,that ownedthecomplex,calledhereinRainbowCity.(Becauseoperationof several of the retail outlets and restaurants in the complex was outsourced to other firms, the analysis herein is restricted to employees of Empowerment Inc.; these workers constituted 80% of the workers on-site at any given time.)Severalcharacteristicsofthesite,firm,andworkforcearerelevantfor understanding the subsequent struggles that emerged around the classification of workers labor as a service job. The firm, Empowerment Inc., had been in operation since the late 1970s. It had operated resorts throughout rural South Africa during the apartheid era, and most of the current managerial employees were Whites who had been with the company for 10-plus years. (Blacks had beeninformallybarredfrommanagerialpositionsduringapartheid,inline with what was known as the color bar.) Following the end of White rule, the firmhadbeenpermittedtocontinueoperationsinSouth Africabutonlyon condition that it adhere to a strict plan for Black economic empowermentspecifically,anationwidesystemofnumericalquotasforhiringpreviously disadvantagedindividualsintolow-levelpositionsthroughouttheorganiza-tion (Webster & Omar, 2003). This category included all those typically con-sidered service workers in the literature, such as food servers (Paules, 1991), casino dealers (Goffman, 1982), and cashiers (Smith, 1992).The work performed by these employees certainly seemed to meet all the scope conditions for an emotionally demanding service job as specified in the literature. Workers engaged in face-to-face encounters (i.e., interactive labor) with clients, and the emotional state of these clients was considered by man-agement to be important. Diners, for instance, were to leave the restaurants content, losing gamblers consoled, and so on. And as a firm operating in a competitive urban marketplace, Empowerment Inc. actively promoted in its marketing material the idea that guests would have an unparalleled, world-class leisure experience. Given such conditions, we would be justified to say that the sociology of service work would predict managers to require workers to perform customer service for clients.But allow me to report the following empirical puzzle: This prediction did not hold true. Managers did not ask workers to perform service for clients. On the contrary, managers vehemently denied that workers should play any sort of roleintheprocessofcreatingforclientsanenjoyableexperience,whereas workersactivelysoughttoclaimanidentityasaserviceworker.Whatis interesting is the issue of what sort of stakes each side saw as up-for-grabs in such symbolic struggles over the nature of service as well as the strategies they by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 304Work and Occupations 37(3)used to pursue these stakes. In short, the very definition and relevant properties of service constituted an active battleground at Rainbow City.Service Is Shit in South Africa: Managerial Mythology Laid BareLet us start by considering managers. All top executives with Empowerment Inc.wereveteranWhiteemployeesofthecompanyandthushaddecades worth of experience running leisure resorts in southern Africa during apart-heid. Many looked back at this time as a golden age in which the oversight of a leisure resort was relatively easy. On one hand, the lack of state regulation allowed the firm to routinely discriminate against Black staffa service sec-torcounterparttotheracialFordismthatcharacterizedSouthAfrican industrygenerally(Webster,2002).Ontheotherhand,thefirmregularly recruited experienced professionals from Europe to manage its properties. In agivenresort,arenownedcheffromGermanymightheadthekitchen, whereas an experienced croupier from London would direct the action on the casino floor. Corporate executives trusted that these expats would ensure the quality of goods and services. The firm, in short, had no explicit service phi-losophyorpolicies;itdecentralizedcustomerserviceroutinestoproperty-level managers.Followingthefallofapartheid,newlaborlegislationspecifiedthatthe general workforce and property-level management must be diversified in line with a larger Black Economic Empowerment plan (Buhlungu, 2009). As for incumbent White staff, a few were promoted into the ranks of corporate man-agement, a few were able to retain their positions, but most resigned. At this same time (the mid-1990s), Empowerment Inc. executives began a thorough review of corporate policy and procedures regarding marketing issues. It was decided that the company needed a new brand identity, and after several days ofbrainstorming,executivescameupwithanewmotifemphasizingfun, excitement, and festivities. A corporate mission statement was drafted, con-taining a series of principles putting the guest at the center of everything theorganizationdoes.AttheRainbowCityResort,posterswereplaced throughoutthebackofthehouseareas(suchasthecafeteria,nearthe employee time clock, and in the break-room) extolling the virtues of giving world-class service to guests.The executive managers I interviewed and observed during my fieldwork appeared to have completely bought into this new idea that customers emo-tions were now something to be managed by the firm. They spoke of those who came to the resort to gamble as depressed individuals who needed to bedistractedandcheeredup.Theyspokematter-of-factlyaboutthenew by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from Sallaz305imperative to provide the hotels guests with a world-class leisure experi-ence.Andtheyproudlydisplayedontheirdesksbronzeplaquesbearing phrases such as The customer is always right.But beneath this general rhetoric, there was something curious about how managers went about creating a positive experience for guests: They believed thatcustomerserviceonthepartofthefirmsfrontlineemployeeswasto play no part in it. Consider the following quote from the manager of Rainbow Citys slot machine division. He is describing a new plan to generate enthu-siasm among gamblers at the casino:MGR: We got this new promotion event planned, we call it Lucky Slot Madness.Everyonewillbesittingthereplayingtheirmachines, when at some point in the night there will be a great commotion and all the lights on all the machines will start flashing. One by one, the lights will go off until theres only one left on, and this will be the winner. The lucky slot.JS: So whats the point of that? What do they win?MGR:Ohsomethingsmall,justabottleofwineorsomething.The important thing is that it will create a sense of excitement.As this manager narrates an upcoming event, he illustrates that the firm has dedicated significant energy to planning how to manipulate the consumers emotions and overall experience. But notice too what is absent from this nar-rative: workers. All the operators intended to manipulate consumers (lights, music,wine)areobjects,notpersons.Thisispuzzlinggiventhatworkers saturate the complex and are an obvious conduit for facilitating firmclient contact. Here though lies the rub: managers explicitly removed customer ser-vice from the overall formula of experience-production. The words, demeanor, and appearance of workers were all to be neutralized, not accentuated.Managers explained their denial of employees service potential in several ways.MostwereessentialistargumentsconcerningtheinabilityofBlack workers to provide quality customer service. For instance, and as the com-panys operations director explained to me in an informal conversation:TheAfricanmentalityisthattheydeservesomethingfornothing. Theyve been a bartender for two years and expect to be promoted to food and beverage manager. Back in the U.K., youll find an old man whohasbeentendingbarfor20yearsandcangivegoodserviceto 400 people. Here you can assign 400 Blacks to work a bar serving one person, and theyll still find a way to muck it up. by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 306Work and Occupations 37(3)Another executive stated,If youre a Black guy doing a service job, youre dreaming of being a manager in a big office with nice carpet. Youre not thinking about the job at hand, and youre definitely not thinking about the needs of the customer standing there in front of you.The general accusation conveyed by these quotes is one of a cultural incom-petence, induced by a lack of patience and undue expectations. Several man-agers specifically mentioned culture when I asked them directly why they dont ask workers to perform customer service. Its culture, all the obstacles, they just dont have the tools. Consider as well the following statement, in which workers standards of cleanliness are mocked:Well weve met our equity quotas, exceeded them actually. The [pro-vincial regulators] are happy, as weve even got 30% of our workers from a nearby squatter camp. You cant even imagine how tough this hasbeen.Wegivethembrandnewwhitetuxedoshirts,andtheygo home and wash them in the dirty little river. Now everyone is wearing brown shirts! Just bloody brilliant.Another line of argumentation specified that workers, even if they were capableofprovidingqualityservice,wouldnotwantto.Blackworkers resent having to do the service thing, one hotel executive stated, Especially if the customer is White and wealthy. All sort of bad associations are brought up. Here, the executive is referencing the status order of apartheid, wherein thoseclassifiedasBlackwereexpectedtoexhibitdeferencetoWhitesin everyday interaction. It is important to note too that managers claims regard-ing service expectations did not extend down to customers themselves. It is true that clients of the Rainbow City entertainment complex (the majority of whom were White) could no longer expect Black workers to be completely servile in their demeanors. But, on the other hand, many expressed frustra-tion that workers were not encouraged to provide any sort of service at all.The final result of managers myriad truth-claims regarding workers ser-viceabilitieswasanadamantdenialthatcustomerservicecanorshould function as a means of product differentiation in the industry. For instance, in an interview with the CEO of one of Empowerment Inc.s rival companies, I had the following exchange: by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from Sallaz307JS: So what steps does your company take to get workers to provide good customer service?CEO: [chuckling] Look, service in South Africa is shit. Its as simple asthat.Ofcourseweallhaveanimaginationthattherewouldbe ideal service like there is in New York or Las Vegas.JS: And what does that mean, ideal service?CEO: Where you sit down at say a blackjack table, and within a min-ute,awaitresshascomeovertoyou,shesmiles,andtakesyour order for a drink. Or when you get to the hotel reservation desk, and the clerk greets you and makes conversation.AU: But those sort of things, they dont happen here?CEO: No, and I cant see them ever.To summarize the argument thus far: sociologists of work predict that, in competitive industries, a positive consumer experience will become a means ofproductdifferentiation,whereasworkersservicewillbeapartofsuch differentiationstrategies.Thisisastraightforwardandlogicalhypothesis, one in accordance with basic economic principles. But my findings from the leisureindustryincontemporarySouthAfricapresentananomaly:They validate the first part of this argument but not the second. The leisure industry in Johannesburg is undoubtedly competitive. And executives within the firm I studied have recently come to see a positive guest experience as an essen-tial part of their marketing plan. Today, they actively strategize ways to con-trol and manipulate clients emotions. But managers refuse to acknowledge worker service as a possible means for doing so. Interviewee and interviewee voiced a fatalistic resignation to the fact that service in South Africa is shit, to invoke the fecal metaphor mentioned above. When pressed to justify this argument,theyreferencedtheabilitiesanddesiresofworkers.Blacks, theirargumentwent,wereunableand/orunwillingtoperformservicefor clients.Workers themselves, however, had a different take.But We Are Service Professionals! Workers CounterclaimsDidmanagersargumentsaccuratelyreflectthecapacitiesanddesiresof workers? Based on my cumulative fieldwork observations, I argue not. On repeatedoccasions,andinvariousforumsthroughouttheleisureresort,I witnessed workers challenge managerial claims. Nor were these isolated and idiosyncratic events, as these counterclaims were patterned and displayed a by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 308Work and Occupations 37(3)definite logic. The goal of this section is to use Bourdieus political sociology to illuminate and interpret these patterns. The overall picture to emerge is of Rainbow City as a veritable battleground for symbolic claims over the mean-ingofseeminglycommonplacenotionssuchascustomersatisfaction,ser-vice work, and professionalism.Management depicted workers as constrained by various elements of their culture.Thethreetropesmostcommonlyusedwerethatoftheuppity Black who was too busy dreaming of an office job to concentrate on service, the incompetent Black who lacked the tools to relate to the firms respect-ableclientele,andtheangryBlackwhowouldbeoffendedifaskedto prove service. In reality, though, most workers fit none of these stereotypes. The 2,000-plus employees of Rainbow city were primarily Black South Afri-cans, and they were diverse in terms of gender, age, and prior work experi-ences. For many, it was their first job, and some surely did lack the skills that wouldbenecessaryforworld-classservice(suchasthenewrestaurant server who was only partially fluent in English or the cocktail waitress whose body type failed to meet managers expectations concerning ideal standards ofbeauty).Butfewworkersviewedserviceasinherentlydifficultor demeaning. On the contrary, the typical worker with whom I interacted was opentotheideaofprovidingserviceandtoamoregeneralconceptionof service professionalism.Workersclaimstoaserviceidentityhadbothmaterialandidealbases. For instance, one issue around which service disputes often crystallized was the companys tipping policy. In the late 1990s, Empowerment Inc. decided tobantippingthroughoutallofitsSouthAfricanproperties.Signswere posted notifying customers that they were not to offer gratuities to workers. Today, if a worker does receive a tip, he or she is required to hand it over to a supervisor, with the money then going into the propertys general revenue account. Cameras and security guards monitor workers to insure that they do not surreptitiously keep a tip; workers found guilty of doing so are consid-ered guilty of theft and could be dismissed.Not surprisingly, the no-tipping policy was unpopular with workersand customerstoo.Itwouldnotbeanunderstatementtosaythatbothgroups thoroughly despised it. For example, I attended a monthly staff meeting held in the large arena usually reserved for concerts and boxing matches. During the question-and-answer period, a female casino dealer stood up and asked the property manager: I just want to know one thing. Where do our tips go? They should be mine! From the staff came sounds of clapping and shouts of support: You go girl, Uh-huh, you tell them. The manager responded by takingthemicrophoneandexplainingtotheroomthattipincomeisquite by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from Sallaz309volatile, whereas the companys flat wage provides a stable income. Some days, workers make lots of tips but some days they make hardly any. Nor, he explained, do workers now have to worry about kissing up to people. For these reasons, the no-tip policy was actually in workers best interest. The young woman was not satisfied, however. She stepped back up to the micro-phone and declared, But I am here to be a service professional. This policy makes me unhappy, and if I am not happy then the guest is not happy!This interaction, reported verbatim, illustrates well how conflicts between management and workers over bread-and-butter issues played out in relation to the issue of service. It may also be considered a classic example of a nomi-nationstruggleinsituthatis,aninterpersonaljousttoimposeabinding definitiononanotherwiseunnamedphenomenon.Tostart,theworkeris making a claim in which are linked a series of items. First, she has expropri-atedandendorsedtheofficialcompanyrhetoric(expressedthroughoutthe workplace) concerning the importance of customer satisfaction. Clients are guests whose emotional happiness is integral to the organizations suc-cess. In direct contrast to managerial thought, which considers its own actions asthesoleinstrumentforaffectingclients(throughmeanssuchasmusic, contests, and alcohol), Suzanne is inserting into the equation a new (indepen-dent)variable:theserviceprovidedbyemployeessuchasherself.Inthis context,goodservicecanbesaidtopossessapositiveordownstream modality (Latour, 1987, p. 23) insofar as it is rhetorically framed as a neces-sary prerequisite for the subsequent production of customer satisfaction (If I am not happy, then the guest is not happy).But Suzannes truth-claim concerning customer service can also be said to possess an upstream modality. To take the claim seriously on its own terms requires moving back in time, to reconsider the origins of a corporate policy already in place. The companys practice of prohibiting and confiscating tips makes her unhappy because it is an unfair theft of what is rightfully hers. Her anger and unhappiness are thus justified through reference to a series of more generalprinciplesofequity(Boltanski&Theverot,2006).Whocouldbe cheerful and give good service when one is the victim of an ongoing crime?AslogicallysoundasSuzannesargumentwas,itcouldnotbutfailto prevail insofar as it rested on an assumption to which managerial thought was hostile. This assumption was precisely that workers emotional labor could influencecustomersatisfaction.Managerspracticallogicassumedthatno matter how hard a Black tried (if he or she tried at all), the service provided wouldbeofaninferior,ineffectual,andsulliedsort.Butitisimportantto examine precisely how the property manager attempted to counter Suzannes claim. It would have been entirely inappropriate to articulate this racialized, by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 310Work and Occupations 37(3)stereotypical assumption publicly (thereby risking a discrimination claim or lawsuit).Instead,hesoughttocounterthetruthoftheupstreamclaim,the one equating the no-tipping policy with theft. Far from being an unwarranted act of larceny, the manager argued, the policy is actually an act of benevo-lence. Because tip income fluctuates, the company wants to make sure that workers are able to rely on a guaranteed income source. Hence, they should not be unhappy or upset about the policy. (Of course, workers were not con-sultedaboutthispolicychangenorisitapparentwhytheycouldnotboth receive a stable salary and accept tips.) It should also be pointed out that the no-tipping policy was highly unpopular among clients. On several occasions, I witnessed a gambler, on winning a large bet at a roulette table, tell the deal-ing staff that he or she would be happy to meet them down the road, at the petrol station, after work. The underlying message was that a tip would be handed off in a clandestine location, so that workers could be rewarded for the good dealing service they had provided the bettor.Inadditiontotipping,asecondcommonpointofcontentionbetween managers and workers centered on what I came to label managements Dis-neyhypocrisy.Illprovidesomebackground.Duringtheperiodinwhich top management decided to implement a consistent, company-wide service philosophy,EmpowermentInc.establishedamultiyearcontractwiththe Walt Disney Company. Disney advisors traveled to South Africa and assisted with planning and theming the companys properties. They also gave several presentations to the workforce at Rainbow City about the importance of cus-tomer service. Although employees may often view such seminars with cyni-cism(Kunda,2006),workersatRainbowCityseemednottohaveviewed them as corny or just company speak. On the contrary, they were enthu-siastictohearabouttheDisneyservicephilosophy,andmanyappearedto haveimbueditwithanemancipatorymeaning.Theyappreciatedhowit framed employees as the companys most valuable asset as well as its empha-sisonempoweringfrontlineworkerstotakeresponsibility,makeindepen-dentdecisions,andengageinpositive,respectfulinteractionswithclients. For many workers, it was the first time they had ever heard such rhetoric. It certainly had not been found in any workplaces (service or otherwise) during apartheid.At the time of my fieldwork, a full 2 years after the contract had ended, Rainbow City employees still regularly referenced the Disney experience. Itrepresentedapowerfulsymboloftheinconsistencybetweentheofficial rhetoricofserviceandtherealityofmanagerialpracticeatRainbowCity. Although many current workers had not been present at the original presenta-tions by Disney consultants, there was another vehicle through which Disney by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from Sallaz311memories were kept alive among the workforce. For, as part of the contract with Disney, Empowerment Inc. had allowed a group of around 20 Rainbow City workers to perform internships with Disney at the companys entertain-ment empire in southern Florida. These entailed spending a year in the United States and working at a variety of service jobs at the Magic Kingdom. The ideaatthetime,asinterneesunderstoodit,wasthattheywouldacquire hands-on experience with the Disney service philosophy and then return to South Africa to assist with implementing it at Rainbow City. And although thismayevenhavebeentheoriginalintentionofthecompanyexecutives whoinkedthedeal,workersweredisappointedtofindontheirreturnthat property-levelmanagerswerenottoointerestedtohearabouttheDisney Way let alone make major alterations in how they ran their facility.Though disappointed, the former interns experienced a new role and new-foundstatusamongtheircoworkers.Fortheyconstitutedlivingproofthat therewasnoinherentflawintheDisneyserviceprogramitdidexistin concrete reality, in the United States. The fact that workers were not treated asserviceprofessionalsinSouth Africacouldthusbeattributedtoulterior motivesonthepartofentrenchedmanagers.Ineffect,theDisneyinterns becamepowerfulspokespersonsfortheworkforceasawhole.Theirindi-vidual stories and complaints came to represent the hopes and frustrations of all employees. For instance, when I first began fieldwork in Rainbow Citys marketing department, workers repeatedly referenced Disney as evidence of the companys hypocrisy. When I would inquire further, they would tell me that I should go and talk to Nombuso, a current employee in the hotels call center, because, as one worker stated, she has been there and seen it with her own eyes. I was eventually able to make my way down to the call center,andarrangedtohavelunchwithNombusolaterthatday.Overour meal, she told me her tale.They All Need to Go to Disney: Nombusos StoryNombuso(apseudonym)is26yearsold.SheisfromSoweto(shortfor southwest township), a large Black settlement of more than one million peo-ple, not too far from the Rainbow City complex. Her father had been a taxi driverbeforepassingawayin1998.HermotherstilllivesinSowetoand makes a decent living as a dressmaker. Nombuso has obtained a fairly high degree of education. Because her parents had both kept steady work during her childhood, they had been able to send her to a private secondary school. Shegraduatedin1995andwasacceptedintoa1-yearhotelmanagement course in 1996 (as part of the first class that accepted Black students). She completed the course with honors and in 1997 was hired to be the assistant by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 312Work and Occupations 37(3)chef at a Japanese restaurant in a suburban Johannesburg mall. After 6 months of trying unsuccessfully to learn how to slice sushi, Nombusa received a job offerfromalargehotelchainbasedinPretoria.Shetookthejobbutsoon grew bored and dissatisfied, as she spent the majority of her time doing rou-tine labor as a switchboard operator. This, she says, was not what I went to school for.ItwasatthistimethatNombusoregisteredwithastaffingagency.It arranged for her an interview at the Rainbow City resort, and she was offered a job in the marketing department in the spring of 1999. I was so excitedyippee!thatwhentheycalledmeonFridaytooffermethejob,IsaidI wanted to start that very next Monday. At first, she was put on the switch-board again, receiving and directing calls, but soon her portfolio of tasks was expanded.Shehelpedtodesignorganizationalflowchartsforthehuman resourcesdepartmentandreceivedsomebasicphotographylessonswhile assisting with the design of marketing material. Then came the day she saw a noticeontheemployeebulletinboardadvertisingavailableinternshipsat Disneyworld in Florida. She submitted her resume to the HR coordinator and was one of four Rainbow City staff to be selected for that round (she is not surehowmanyhadappliedtotal).Theyleftinearly2001on1-year contracts.I asked Nombuso why she thought that the company had been willing to release her to do the Disney internship. She replied that the HR coordinator here at Rainbow City had told her that the program was being run through corporate and that they were sincere about sending some promising staff per-sons over to the United States, to learn Disneys techniques and philosophy ofcustomerservice.Theyreallydidwanttobecomeknownasaglobal, world-class service company.Nombuso recounted for me her first reaction to the Disney system as well as her impression as to how it compared with the companies shed worked for in South Africa. First off, she answered, I have nothing negative to say about my experience at Disneyworld. She spent her first 3 months learning how to do event planning on a Disney cruise ship. She performed so well at this job that her next assignment was as a bussing coordinator at the Epcot Centerthemepark.Nombusoischarismaticandgregarious,and6months intoherinternship,shereceivedanawardforhercustomerserviceskills (cast member recognition, as its called). By the time her internship in Flor-idaended,shewasherselftrainingnewinternsintheDisneyprinciplesof good service.TheDisneystyleofmanagementhadbeenentirelynewtoher.They actually encourage you to take initiative, to think independently. Most of her by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from Sallaz313supervisorshadbeenyoung,likeher,andnotasconcernedwithpoweror status. Furthermore, an open-door policy was the norm, which you would never find here. And of course there were rules, but they were more like guidance. I mean, this was a place where you could be free! As a tour opera-tor, shed often had peoples lives in her hands. This proved how much trust management placed in her and gave her a great sense of responsibility and confidence. AtRainbow City,incontrast, she had to run to management for clearance to do anything. This difference, Nombusa says, was puzzling, because most of her managers at Disney were White, but they didnt act as did the managerial staff at Rainbow City, that is, very formally. In general, she labels the latter as insecure and too concerned with discipline.It was like I was living in a dream, because I had to wake up. So Nom-buso described her return to South Africa. Even though she had been assured that leaving to do the internship would not negatively affect her employment with Empowerment Inc., she discovered that her old job had been filled, and the company had not arranged a new position for her. She talked to the mar-keting department head, who explained to her that because of financial pres-sures they could not create for her a new spot nor could they credit her work history so as to grant her the small annual wage increase that other employees hadreceived.Fortheyearpriortoourinterview,shehadbeenfloating around the resort, filling in for sick employees or on busy days. Even worse than this lack of a clear role, nobody [in management] wanted to talk to me [about the Disney experience]. Nombuso requested meetings with the vari-ous department heads to describe in detail how the service philosophy worked inpracticeatDisneyworld.Moreimportant,shewantedtoshowthemthe formal assessments she had brought back with her from Disney, attesting to her excellent service skills. But no one would commit to a time to meet with her, and to this day the assessments sit on a shelf in her kitchen. This all has left Nombuso quite disenchanted: It is the opposite of the open-door policy. They all need to go to Disney.Unable to talk to her managers, Nombuso shared the story of her experi-ence overseas with her coworkers. They were anxious to hear any news at all about life outside of South Africa and listened intensely to her tales about the culture of service professionalism at Disney. Later, I spoke to other former Disney interns at Rainbow City, all of whom reported both a lack of interest from managers and high levels of interest from their colleagues on returning from the United States. In the marketing department today, Nombuso enjoys a special status as one who could speak to managers with a degree of author-ity concerning their hypocrisy in regard to service. And she readily accepts the role of spokesperson, a representative who embodies and gives voice to by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 314Work and Occupations 37(3)the discontent latent in the workforce as a whole. Hence I, as were many new employeesattheresort,wasadvisedtogoseeNombusotolearnabout Rainbow Citys hypocrisy.Analysis and ImplicationsThis article commenced with broad and all-too-brief overviews of both Pierre Bourdieus theory and the emergent sociology of service work. We divided Bourdieus work into broad phases: an initial ethnology of the intransigence of habitus in the colonial labor market, a series of empirical monographs on culture and stratification in France, and finally, a public sociology in opposi-tion to global neoliberalism. We then laid bare several key assumptions of the serviceworkliterature:notably,thatgoodserviceisanunproblematic, even a priori, category of thing and that managers in competitive industries willhaveaninterestinaskingworkerstoprovideit.Admittedly,bothof thesesummariesareguiltyofoversimplification.Exceptionsandcounter-readings could easily be found for every component of each. Nonetheless, I judged it worthwhile to make such generalizations to expose fruitful points of dialogue between the two theory/research programs.The two theories were then taken into the field, as I reported on a major ethnographicprojectwithinaleisureresortinpostcolonialSouthAfrica. Somewhat surprisingly, it was not Bourdieus well-worn concept of habitus that proved most relevant for understanding the labor regime found therein nor was it the service work literatures overarching concern with emotional labor management. Rather, it was Bourdieus theory of political representationand in particular the notion of nomination struggles. For this was a workplace ripe with ongoing struggles to define the very nature of service. During a year of fieldwork at Rainbow City resort, I found that there was no consensus that the labor performed by employees was service work (and even though it met the basic definitional standards found in the literature, such as face-to-face contactwithclients).Workerssoughtthelabelserviceprofessionaland, following a presentation by Disney consultants, actively promoted the idea of a customer-centric organizational philosophy. Management, however, sought to remove workers from the customer service equation. They defined work-ers as background equipment, more akin to manual laborers than to qualified service professionals.Symbolic struggles such as these are not exceptional and inconsequential; theycanhaveimportantmaterialeffects.Forinstance,workersatRainbow City strove to constitute themselves as service workers in order to reform the companystippingpolicy.Buttheyalso,asNombusosstoryillustrated, by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from Sallaz315recognize that service worker is a title that carries at least some connotations ofhonorandresponsibility. Tonameanactivityaserviceistoattachtoita series of other claims, such as respectful treatment of the workers providing it, professionalism, autonomy, and a concern for the emotional well-being of both worker and client. And to deny that a form of work is service is to repudiate such claims. As a principle, we as researchers should be on guard against pre-establishing a definition of service work. Such premature naturalization may be warranted but never at the risk of being blind to the very real symbolic bat-tlesthatmayoccuroverhowworkandservicearedefinedand categorized.Such classification struggles can themselves by classified. At one extreme are informal, interpersonal disputes over character and identity, the paradig-maticexamplebeingthatofaninsultshoutedintheheatofthemoment (Youre an idiot!). At the other extreme is the power of the modern state to conferlegitimatetitles.ThecurrentdebateintheUnitedStatesaboutthe statusofhomehealthcareworkersillustrateswellthisfact,asitfeatures social movements, employers, unions, and other groups lobbying to have this formoflaborclassified(ornot)asformalemployment.Thestate,asthe holder of a monopoly of symbolic power, represents the ultimate arbiter of struggles to name and classify.The conflict at Rainbow City over whether or not employees could claim thetitleofserviceworkersdidnotfiteitheroftheseextremepositions. Workers claims were not spontaneous or individual outbursts. By the time of my arrival, they had been somewhat institutionalized, with workers regularly usingphrasessuchasIamaserviceprofessionalduringconflictswith managementandwiththeemergenceofparticularspokespersons(suchas Nombuso)representingthewidespreaddiscontentamongworkers.Buton theotherhand,therewasnoobviousauthoritybeyondtheworkplaceto which one side or the other could turn for final resolution of the dispute. The stateinSouthAfricadoesmakeadistinctionbetweenmanufacturingand service workers but only for the purpose of collecting statistical information on the economy. No worker I encountered was aware of these governmental statisticsnordoesthestateusethisclassificatorysystemtoconferspecial rights on certain categories of workers (Seidman, 2008). Institutionalized yet lacking a final arbiter, symbolic struggles over service were at a stalemate.Although neither side could declare a final victory, the balance of forces undoubtedly favored management, which resolutely refused to label or treat the work of workers as customer service. Rainbow City employees were part oftheCongressofSouth AfricanTradeUnions,thecountryslaborunion federation, but none of the micro-political contestations documented herein by Nicolas Diana on October 25, 2012 wox.sagepub.com Downloaded from 316Work and Occupations 37(3)fellwithintheambitoftheformalprocessofcontractnegotiations andgrievanceprocedures(Wood&Psoulis,2001).Informally,workers could and did protest, but they were unable to change any of the policies that would have afforded them treatment as service professionals. As sociolo-gists,wecannotoverlooksuchsymbolicstrugglesnordismissthemas secondary to more material issues. Definitional disputes over service provide a window into the larger political economy of post-apartheid South Africa. By treating them as a worthwhile analytical object, we may observe linkages between macro-level processes (such as new employment equity laws) and micro-level ones (such as the everyday experience of employees). In short, a Bourdieuian approach to service work requires that we move from unreflec-tive representations of labor to careful study of labors of representation.AcknowledgmentsFor taking the time to provide valuable comments and ideas on this articleand for inspiringhimtofinallyfinishittheauthorthanksKatherineChen,Marek Korczynski, Robin Leidner, Steve Lopez, Sean ORiain, and Steven Vallas.Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.FundingThe research on which this article is based was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Social Science Research Council.ReferencesBoltanski,L.,&Theverot,L.(2006).Onjustification:Economiesofworth.Princ-eton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Bourdieu, P. (1979). Algeria 1960. 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