Working Bodies Interactive Service Employment and Workplace Identities [Paperback]

• 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