Affective Labour: (Dis) assembling Distance and Difference - Softcover

Thomas, James M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1783483903 ISBN 13: 9781783483907

Verlag: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

A critical examination of affective labour based on ethnographic fieldwork. It traces the centrality of affective labor in enabling and constraining prevailing norms and practices of race, citizenship, class, gender, and sexuality across multiple spatial contexts.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

James M. Thomas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Mississippi.

Jennifer G. Correa is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin.

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Affective Labour

(Dis)assembling Distance and Difference

By James M. Thomas, Jennifer G. Correa

Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd.

Copyright © 2016 James S. Thomas and Jennifer Correa
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78348-390-7

Contents

Acknowledgements, 
Introduction: Difference, Distance and Affective Labour, 
1 The Production of Good Times in Urban Nightlife, 
2 An Economy of Fear on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 
3 Diversity Regimes and Affective Labour in Higher Education, 
4 Affective Labour from Above and Below: 'Black Lives Matter' and Resistance Toward State Apparatuses of Terror and Violence, 
5 Affective Labour and World Building: Toward a Theory of Affect for Radical Change, 
Conclusion, 
Bibliography, 

CHAPTER 1

The Production of Good Times in Urban Nightlife

Nightlife has long been of interest to scholars and critics of culture. Within the existing literature, however, nightlife is overwhelmingly presented as either a third-space critical for the sustainment of civic engagement and participatory democracy, or as a space where micro-articulations of social ills, including racism, classism, sexism and heteronormativity, are refashioned and reconfigured. Scholars have argued, for example, that bars, restaurants, cafes and other nightlife establishments operate as 'social levelers,' temporarily rendering social differences among patrons irrelevant. In his classic work on urban public space, Ray Oldenburg describes this space, including nightlife, as opposing 'the tendency to be restrictive in the enjoyment of others by being open to all and by laying emphasis on qualities not confined to status distinctions.' This is, of course, similar to the more recent work by Elijah Anderson on 'cosmopolitan canopies': public spaces, including restaurants, bars and nightclubs, 'that offer a respite from the lingering tensions of urban life and an opportunity for diverse people to come together ... engage one another in a spirit of civility, or even comity and goodwill.' Sociologist Tammy Anderson, in her study of urban rave scenes, also characterizes these scenes as sites where openness and inclusivity are fostered, and diversity, equality and community are valued. Painted in this light, urban public spaces, including nightlife, are 'good' spaces, where participants have structured opportunities to engage one another in a variety of topics, thereby improving civil discourse, civic engagement and social relations.

Other scholars take a more critical perspective to urban nightlife in order to show how nightlife districts manufacture and impose racial and classed rule that restricts access and participation for members of racial, ethnic, and sexual minority groups. In his most recent book, sociologist Reuben May argues nightlife is best characterized by integrated segregation: though participants may ostensibly be open to the idea of sharing space with persons unlike themselves, the norms of race, class and culture prevail within urban nightlife and structure individuals' interactions in such a way that 'rather than experiencing unfettered interaction with others on the downtown streets, [people] are socially bound to interaction with those social types like themselves.' Dress codes, common throughout a variety of urban nightlife districts, often target the cultural fashions of black and working-class youth. As methods of social control, dress codes work to block racial and ethnic minorities, as well as working-class youth, from participating in 'spirit of civility' of these scenes.

Growing up in the 49/63 neighborhood of Kansas City, Missouri, JT remembers vividly the restrictions that curfew and dress placed upon nightlife participants in Kansas City's popular Westport nightlife district. From 1999 to 2004, Westport area bar and nightclub owners, in conjunction with local law enforcement and the city council, attempted constructing barricades around the entrances to the nightlife district on Friday and Saturday nights. Later, they instituted curfews for summer weekends, and even floated the idea of charging a fee simply to enter the public space. By 2011, the city council, under the pretense of reducing swelling homicide rates, passed a curfew law that barred anyone under the age of eighteen not only from Westport, but from four other entertainment districts in the Kansas City metro area. From May through September, all youth under the age of eighteen had a curfew of 9:00 p.m. Though the Mayor's office focused on the relationship between teenagers and the growing homicide rates, critics noted that the areas in which the curfew was being enforced were not the sites where most homicides were occurring. On Friday and Saturday nights, police officers were stationed at its entrances.

While the city's curfew was seen by many as targeting the working-class, black and brown youth who lived in the Westport neighborhood, local nightlife establishments were free to institute their own set of rules for entry into their establishments. Most of these rules revolved around dress codes. Like other scholars have noted, dress codes in urban nightlife districts target the cultural fashions of working-class racial and ethnic minority youth. In Westport, it was no different. Many establishments had explicit bans on athletic apparel, plain white t-shirts, and loose fitting (i.e., baggy) clothing. Even some of the late night coffee houses and dining establishments had dress codes. As the local cultural and style magazine, The Pitch, wrote, Westport was aiming to be 'something like the more gentrified parts of Brooklyn: smart, artisanal, local. And any resemblance is intentional [emphasis ours].' In Kansas City's Westport nightlife district, even if you could access the public space of nightlife, you were not guaranteed access to nightlife places.

Though how race and class are policed within urban nightlife restricts participation for nonwhites and those unable to perform middle-class aesthetics, nightlife is also a highly gendered and heteronormative production. Historically, nightlife has served as an important site for economic transactions among men, with women serving as social and symbolic commodities. The historian and cultural critic Jane Rendell has argued that within contemporary nightlife, 'men organize and display their activities of exchange and consumption, including the desiring, choosing, purchasing, and consuming of female commodities, for others to look at in public space.' In James Spradley and Brenda Mann's classic The Cocktail Waitress, for example, these anthropologists show how women who work within nightlife venues are often encouraged to perform a hyper-femininity intended to communicate their sexual readiness for men who frequent these establishments. Additionally, however, these performances of hyper-femininity are also intended to communicate sexual availability for their male coworkers. The result is that even the sexual availability of women frequenting these establishments as customers is colored by how men perceive the women who work within them.

Spradley and Mann's findings help illuminate what Lauren Berlant and Michael Werner characterized as the mundanity of practical heterosexuality in everyday life. For Berlant and Werner, practical heterosexuality describes the production and distribution of heteronormativity through everyday habits and actions that, while not sexual, nevertheless center on the idea of heterosexual sex. The waitress that carries a tray of shots around a nightclub is not...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1783483903
• ISBN 13: 9781783483907
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 234
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland