Where did the term originate?

 

The term emotional labour was originally created in 1983 by the American sociologist Arlie Hochschild, when she wrote about the concept in her book The Managed Heart. In the book she refers to emotional labour as the need to ‘induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others’. She has since describe it in interviews as work which involes trying to feel the right feeling for the job, with each job having varying emotional labour requirements.

This involves evoking and suppressing feelings… From the flight attendant whose job it is to be nicer than natural to the bill collector whose job it is to be, if necessary, harsher than natural, there are a variety of jobs that call for this. Teachers, nursing-home attendants, and child-care workers are examples. The point is that while you may also be doing physical labor and mental labor, you are crucially being hired and monitored for your capacity to manage and produce a feeling.

Reference :

ETHICAL UNICORN. (2019). What Is Emotional Labour & Why Is It Important? [online] Available at: https://ethicalunicorn.com/2019/05/19/what-is-emotional-labour-why-is-it-important/.[Accessed on 21 May 2021].