Towards a Psychoanalytic Concept of Affective-Digital Labour

This article draws on the argument that users on corporate social media conduct labour through the sharing of usergenerated content. Critical political economists argue that such acts contribute to value creation on social media and are therefore to be seen as labour. Following a brief introduction of this paradigm, I relate it to the notion of affective labour which has been popularised by the Marxist thinkers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. To them, affective labour (as a sub-category of immaterial labour) denotes embodied forms of labour that are about passion, well-being, feelings of ease, immaterial products and generally a kind of communicative relationality between individuals. I point to some problems with a lack of clarity in their conceptualisation of affective labour and argue that the Freudian model of affect can help in theorising affective labour further through a focus on social media. According to Freud, affect can be understood as a subjective, bodily experience which is in tension with the discursive and denotes a momentary feeling of bodily dispossession. In order to illustrate those points, I draw on some data from a research project which featured interviews with social media users who have facial disfigurements about their affective experiences online. The narratives attempt to turn embodied experiences into discourse

Immaterial Labour and Reality TV: The Affective Surplus of Excess

Drawing on discussions of neoliberalism, immaterial labour and exploitation of reality television participants, this article argues that the patients on the British reality show ‘Embarrassing Bodies’ are exploited because they receive no monetary return for their performances and are frequently shamed on camera. It then seeks to theorize exploited labour on reality television through Debord’s notion of the Spectacle. The author argues that in contemporary reality television the Spectacle is amplified through shame and affect. This is particularly evident in programmes that are about health and the body. The spectacular labour depicted in such programmes may serve to attract audiences for entertainment purposes, as well as to discipline them so that they remain healthy and productive workers

Affective Dissent

This article identifies a form of affective bio-politics more intimate, engrained and corporeally enacted than that identified in recent work emphasising the affective qualities of activism and labour. While these latter reinforce and bolster existing analyses through the identification of further affective concerns, affective bio-politics suggests that neoliberalism supports and sustains itself quite fundamentally through, what have generally been, unrecognised affective means. While such affective regulation can only ever be partial and imprecise its unrecognised, and thus implicitly concealed, character lends it a particular cogency. Illuminating the mechanisms through which such affective regulatory modulation is achieved thus has a powerful potential to clarify further opportunities to disrupt and counter neoliberalism. This account juxtaposes an analysis of affective bio-politics with existing analyses of the affective, and performative, dimensions to activist politics, in order to facilitate the identification of specific opportunities for further affective contestationary strategies

Relationships of proactive behaviour with job-related affective well-being and anticipated retirement age: an exploration among older employees in Belgium

Developed countries throughout the world are challenged with the ageing of their labour force. In these societal contexts, low employment rates and early labour market exits of older employees are at stake, as well as arrangements for retirement, financial household considerations and mutual obligations between generations. Although proactive behaviour has been extensively studied, no research has addressed the proactive behaviour of older employees themselves when facing (re)hiring and retention versus early retirement. For the first time, this study tests the relationships of proactive behaviour with job-related affective well-being and anticipated retirement age in a sample of employees aged 50+ (N = 89) in Belgium. The findings are obtained by using a self-report questionnaire. Statistical analysis includes correlation and regression analysis. Major findings are that (i) proactive older employees feel energetic, enthusiastic, inspired, at ease, relaxed and satisfied; and (ii) later retirement is anticipated when experiencing positive affective well-being at study

Contemporary medical television and crisis in the NHS

This article maps the terrain of contemporary UK medical television, paying particular attention to Call the Midwife as its centrepiece, and situating it in contextual relation to the current crisis in the NHS. It provides a historical overview of UK and US medical television, illustrating how medical television today has been shaped by noteworthy antecedents. It argues that crisis rhetoric surrounding healthcare leading up to the passing of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 has been accompanied by a renaissance in medical television. And that issues, strands and clusters have emerged in forms, registers and modes with noticeable regularity, especially around the value of affective labour, the cultural politics of nostalgia and the neoliberalisation of healthcare

Absences and Silences: The Representation of the Tea Picker in Colonial and Fair Trade Advertising

Ethical consumption as a form of consumerism suggests that there can be a benign form of globalization where consumers can effect positive change by exercising the ‘choice’ of opting for fair trade. In marketing this choice, fair trade advertising of tea, cocoa and coffee in particular has adopted the image of the smiling and happy worker from the global South, often in their working environment and testifying by their presence and their smile to the ethical and moral nature of the product. They therefore condone our consumption as moral pleasure. This essay explores the history of this image in colonial advertising and considers how the smile works in contemporary advertising to silence these workers who are unable to ‘speak the truth about themselves’ (Michel Foucault interviewed by Gerard Raulet)

Feminist Reflections on the Scope of Labour Law: Domestic Work, Social Reproduction and Jurisdiction

Drawing on feminist labour law and political economy literature, I argue that it is crucial to interrogate the personal and territorial scope of labour. After discussing the “commodification” of care, global care chains, and body work, I claim that the territorial scope of labour law must be expanded beyond that nation state to include transnational processes. I use the idea of social reproduction both to illustrate and to examine some of the recurring regulatory dilemmas that plague labour markets. I argue that unpaid care and domestic work performed in the household, typically by women, troubles the personal scope of labour law. I use the example of this specific type of personal service relation to illustrate my claim that the jurisdiction of labour law is historical and contingent, rather than conceptual and universal. I conclude by identifying some of the implications of redrawing the territorial and personal scope of labour law in light of feminist understandings of social reproduction

Systematically reviewing remote e-workers’ well-being at work: a multidimensional approach

The practice of remote e-working, which involves work conducted at anyplace, anytime, using technology, is on the increase. The aim of this systematic literature review is to gain a deeper understanding ofthe association between remote e-working, within knowledge workers, and the five dimensions of well-being at work: affective, cognitive, social, professional, and psychosomatic. Sixty-three studies employingquantitative, qualitative and mixed-method designs have been included in the review. Findings indicate that we know more about remote e-workers’ affective state and their social and professional life than we know about their cognitive functioning and psychosomatic conditions. Whilst the research indicates a positive focus there are some negative aspects of this way of working which are highlighted within this review; such as social and professional isolation, and perceived threats in professional advancement. This review may be of great importance for academics, to continue the theoretical advancement of research into remote e-working, and practitioners, to implement and manage remote e-working attitudes and policies more effectively

Brand value: how affective labour helps create brands

One way brands create value is by engaging the capacity of cultural labourers to animate affective connections with consumers. Brands assemble social spaces that harness the communicative capacities of cultural actors. A mode of branding that works by managing an open-ended social process depends on affective labour. Affective labour involves not only the capacity of individuals to produce specific meanings and feelings, but also the open-endedly social capacity to stimulate and channel attention and recognition. This affective labour does not always depend on making particular "authentic" representations, but on facilitating a general circulation of meaning. By investing in social spaces and relations corporate brands engage popular musicians in new forms of labour. This article examines the participation of popular musicians in branding programmes run in Australia by corporate brands between 2005 and 2010. I examine the accounts of musicians and managers who participate in these programmes to consider how they make their participation in social relations that create brand value meaningful. They employ a variety of practices: identifying with brands, endorsing brands' claims of socially responsible investment in culture, and distancing themselves from their own participation in branded space

Embodying labor, then and now

In her introduction to the new edition of Women on the Line, first published in 1982, Miriam Glucksmann notes that it had been written well before the body and embodiment had become an explicit focus of studies of work and employment. However, rereading Women on the Line reminds us that ethnographers have long paid attention to the embodied aspects of work, although few of them have written about them as eloquently as Glucksmann. In the original volume she was able to articulate how it felt to experience herself in relation to her environment, a phenomenological perspective made possible by her adoption of an autoethnographic writing style (a strategy linked to her rejection both of a narrowly academic approach and, in consequence, of the disembodied authorial voice that tended to go with it). Perhaps another reason why Glucksmann was able to write about her working on the line with such sensitivity to the embodiment of the experience is that she was new to assembly line work, so the embodied routines of factory life had not yet been submerged below the level of conscious articulation. It is useful therefore to summarize what she had to say and to think about how we can build on it