The hidden emotions of tourism

Abstract

To date, scholarship has presented us with three perspectives on organizational uses of emotion: Emotion as Work, Organizational Uses of Emotional Expression, and Organizational Cultural Manipulation of Emotion. Within all three of these perspectives, the modem employee is defined as a passive victim who is controlled by a corporate management which strategically influences the emotional expression of workers. This thesis proposes a forth perspective on the role of emotion in work. Indeed, I argue that the scholastic emphasis on managerial control evident in present theory should be teamed with an equal emphasis on the worker as an active and creative being. That is, I posit that individuals are empowered by free will and social consciousness and have the ability to make choices and create meaning within the dominant social order. Utilizing the theories of resistance presented by Michel Foucault and James Scott, I argue that employees are capable of both performing the emotions favored by management in public transcripts and minimizing the effects of such performances on their sense of self by their intricate and diverse acts of resistance. Using the site of Pairs Hotel as a case study, I paint a picture of the employee based on her ability to actively decipher, interpret and resist the emotional standards and dominant texts of management. It is a picture of a cunning worker who has the potential to play the role of the hospitable server defined by management without completely accepting and internalizing the role. Next, I describe how employees actively resist such emotional performances and reinterpret don-tinant texts to serve their own ends. Lastly, I illustrate the variability within and negotiability of resistance and the impact of the individual employee and guest on both acts of the performance and acts of resistance.