Glass Slipper, Take Two)
Here the term branding work refers to that activity of symbolic manip-ulation that generates and modifies value through the ongoing creation and rehabilitation of brands. Branding work is widely regarded as a prototypical form of affective labor, a category that has come to denote jobs focused on the regulation of emotional fields. Although the label of branding work is typically applied to paid and tactical labor, it need not be reserved for those who specialize in branding for a living. As suggested earlier, branding work in the twenty -first century is best understood as a distributed activity that enlists myriad participants. Indeed, because it is often performed on the edge or outside of customary employment bound-aries, and because it entails the production of commodified cultural con-tent, branding is also commonly cited as an instance of immaterial labor.
This chapter is concerned with a specific kind of branding work, one implicitly addressed from the opening paragraph —namely, that activity by which a set of tasks comes to assume the status of an immediately recognizable “occupation” (see Ashcraft, Muhr, Rennstam, & Sullivan, 2012). Simply put, we take interest in work itself as an object of brand-ing, although it is rarely considered as such. We consider why not, and preview our argument, next.
Why Occupational Identity and Branding?
An (Ir)Rationale and Preview
Why do we commonly treat organizations, but not occupations, as foci for identity work and branding? A bountiful literature considers organi-zations as units that develop identity, image and, more recently, brand, or strategic alignments and condensations of internal and external essence.
No parallel literature addresses occupations in this way. Instead, ques-tions of identity and occupation are mostly limited to individual practitio-ners’ dis/identification, while research on the meaning of work examines workers’ variable perceptions and experiences, presuming constancy in the nature of a job itself. An impression arises that organizations are identity - vulnerable in some way that occupations are not. We seem to assume that organizations are susceptible to a number of symbolic part-ners, hence collective identity constructions are necessary to rein them in, whereas occupations are not similarly promiscuous and, so, do not require comparable effort —except for their practitioners, who must nav-igate the relation between work and other sources of identity.
It is as if the nature and worth of work itself simply is , a straight-forward matter determined by evident features such as the physical or cognitive demands of tasks and the market for them, level of complexity or knowledge abstraction, requisite education, degree of autonomy, sal-ary and benefits, and so forth. These, after all, are among the burdens of proof for occupations aspiring to elevate their professional standing — burdens of proof and rewards for successful persuasion, we should add.
For how do any of these features actually come about, and do imagery and meanings stamped upon the work have anything to do with it?
The short answer, which we develop at length in this chapter, is a resound-ing yes: To be known and evaluated as an occupation is to endure symbolic associations, which may or may not be articulated and formalized, but in any case are profoundly felt , and it is these sensed associations that move work’s enacted character and value. Discerning the nature and worth of work entails identity maneuvers, in other words. Or to put the matter bluntly, any review of work’s factual features involves social negotiation. We contend that these maneuvers, even when explicit, operate primarily through affect instead of direct meaning contestation, even when the latter occurs. That is, the mean-ings that make work work must materialize as both sense -able and move -able in order to take hold. Occupational identity is an affective relation, we will argue, all the more so in the days of advanced capitalism. Hence, branding is particularly relevant to contemporary experiences of work.
To clarify, we are not simply saying that one’s occupational iden-tity exerts affective tugs. This much we already know from abundant research on emotionality in work and organizational life, much of which frames emotion either as the feelings of self -contained individuals at and about work (e.g., stress, burn -out, bullying) or as a distinguishing feature of certain, usually feminized occupations (e.g., emotion, aesthetic, service labor). The claim advanced here recalls the distinction drawn in Chapter 2 , between emotion as sifted personal feelings and affect as a transper-sonal flow of feeling that evades such capture. Pushing beyond the feel-ings of practitioners, we are saying that the identity of an occupation as an entity —a coherent line of work distinguished by certain qualities —is created and regulated through affect.
It is our specific contention that the character and value of work itself is affectively rather than rationally generated. In other words, occupa-tional identity is born of concrete inhabitations wherein certain bodies, objects, spaces, practices, and meanings come to adhere to one another, and it circulates through nomadic encounters that radiate these sticky yet unfinished associations with felt proof of their inherency. It is this affec-tive production that we call occupational branding : practices whereby a line of work becomes branded, or re -branded, as such —readily identifi-able occupations possessed of essential character and value, best known through an immediate reflex of feeling, sensed as real rather than other-wise verified. Ashcraft’s (2013) conception of the glass slipper provides our starting point, and we rework it through a relational ontology in order to explicate occupational identity as an affective economy with tangible returns. Consistent with a decentralized view of branding work, occupational branding may be proprietary, strategic, and compensated, as in the labor of some professional associations, but it is not necessarily so.
In depicting affect as an a -rational force that (dis)organizes occupa-tions, we do not mean to awaken tired dualisms between rationality and
its supposedly irrational opposites. In fact, we treat rational accounts and coherent narratives of work’s identity as integral to its affective compo-sition. These symbolic devices are among the vital materials that bring credible form to vague senses of labor. However, they do so in a par-ticular way: by assuring us that Logos, not Pathos, is the narrator; by moving a malleable identity toward immovable reality through narra-tion; and by negating the very sensate roots that lend such narratives life and animation. Put differently, meaning contestation plays a key part in the affective germination of occupational identity, but it does not operate alone, first, or at the disembodied remove it often claims. Struggles over meaning are also mired in the flow of affect.
We thus come to reference arguments about occupational identity as irrationales : resources of reasoned meaning that are part of affect’s movement —indeed, distinctive tools for its transmission —for they con-tribute to felt proof and passionate attachments precisely by denying the power of sensory influence (and this contradiction earns the prefix “ir”).
By way of illustration, we are building such an irrationale here, inhabit-ing the form of disembodied scholarly argument to make a case for, and from, affective flow —more on this point later.
But first, this is how the argument previewed here contributes to current understandings: Whereas Ashcraft’s (2013) recent conception claimed the centrality of communication by positioning discursive strug-gle as the constitutive mechanism of occupational identity, we open a different space for communication in this chapter, guided by the affective model developed in Chapter 3 . In this model, occupational identities are not so much social constructions of working subjectivities as they are worldings of labor, inhabited associations rife with intensities that turn ordinary tasks into scenes of living. Communication, then, is not so much a battle for meaning as a mode of energetic encounter and transfer. It is how the various intensities that make jobs into habitable occupations come into contact and travel, bouncing from scene to scene and morph-ing along the way. Ultimately, we develop with greater specificity the first trajectory that Chapter 3 identified as following from this revision:
meaning as material that gathers, condensates, and circulates.
Occupational identity is a pressing issue at this historical moment, if for no other reason than the staggering growth of income inequality amid late capitalism, as outlined in Chapter 1 . Appraisals of the relative character and worth of jobs weigh heavily in the explosion of income inequality, and people of color and white women are overwhelmingly concentrated in lines of work that draw lower valuation —a phenomenon known as occupational segregation (e.g., Charles & Grusky, 2004; Cohen & Huffman, 2003;
Tomaskovic -Devey, 1993). Regarded in this light, income inequality is not half of the alarming story. Enmeshed with wage gaps linked to occupational segregation are the differential distribution of voice, risk, opportunity, sleep, mental and physical health and health care, exposure to violence, access to
quality food and housing, to resources of all kinds, experiences of dignity and shame, of authority and deference, intergenerational and community thriving, security and precarity, even life expectancy, and more.
Occupational identity is a leading vector of inequality, a powerful vein through which asymmetries accumulate, stick together, and saturate the ordinary. As we will show, occupations occupy —lives, spaces, and tem-poralities well beyond workplace demands, compelling and conditioning relational performances of power, day in and day out. These relentless, contagious, embodied experiences swell, and sometimes fester, into sim-mering currents of feeling that can far outrun any rational declarations of self - or group - interest. The recent U.S. elections, and associated divides between professional and working classes, raced and gendered bodies, attest to this phenomenon in vivid color, as do similar surges of national-ist populism around the globe. We ignore the affective politics of occupa-tional identity at our peril.
Accompanying these escalating inequalities is the rise of “truthiness”
(thanks to Stephen Colbert for the pithy expression). We lack space to trace here the complex relations between advanced capitalism and the so -called post -truth era, though others are trying (e.g., Harsin, 2015; McCright &
Dunlap, 2010; Roper, Ganesh, & Zorn, 2016). Suffice it to say, affect plays an increasingly vital role in the production of facts, or should we say cer-tainty, unseating trust in conventional institutions and information sources, and favoring impressions of style over substantive debate. Consider the prev-alent preoccupation with the “optics” of things, or their implications for brand. With regard to occupational identity, proof of merit and accountable record fall by the wayside as the pivotal question becomes: Does s/he seem presidential (or managerial, professional, like “executive material,” an engi-neer, and so on)? Arguably, whether something looks or feels true matters more than ever in a growing number of arenas. And it is affect that delivers this felt proof, which is incontrovertible for its visceral resonance.
It is no longer safe to assume, (as) if it ever was, that the nature and value of occupations is rooted in rational soil. Occupational branding occurs, and is gaining steam, we suggest, precisely because it is not. We do not mean this as some nostalgic projection of a normative future, but, rather, as an invitation to come to terms with what appears to be evolving.
The Glass Slipper: A Case for the Materiality of Communication at Work
As hinted by our justification for attending to occupational identity and branding, we are especially interested in the claim that occupa-tions assume distilled identities, or brands, in accord with the company they keep. Ashcraft (2013) argues that decades of research on tional segregation deliver convincing evidence: The fate of an occupa-tion depends in significant part on the embodied social identities with
whom it becomes associated. Historically, for example, the most reliable way to professionalize is to align a set of tasks with elite (usually, white and well -educated) men and masculinities. Conversely, the surest way to downgrade the worth of work is emasculation through links to women, feminization, or racialized others. The history of branding thus comes full circle, as bodies branded in the old sense (i.e., stigmatized) leave a definitive stamp on the character of the tasks they perform. Likewise, the privilege of un branded bodies —those that manage to escape specific marks and, thus, appear universally human —imprints their labor too.
Not only do people derive identity from their work, then; work derives identity from affiliated people. But how , more precisely, does this happen?
Engaging extant theories of occupational segregation, Ashcraft (2013) makes a case for communication as an alternate explanation, contending that symbolic practices across many cultural locales constitute occupational identity. Her view of communication is akin to that outlined at the outset of Chapter 3 : the distributed social activity of (re)constructing durable, yet also pliant, meanings that bring about palpable consequences. Specifically, the identity of an occupation arises through ongoing discursive struggle over two entangled questions: What is this line of work, and who does it?
Several key features of this discursive struggle merit mention. First, it transpires in multiple sites , often detached or only loosely connected, such as family socialization, education and training, employing organizations, professional associations, popular cultural representations, and so on.
Second, it may be more or less concentrated and strategic . Imagine a formal professionalization campaign versus organic identity formation, as when jokes about the stereotypical practitioners of a job (e.g., lawyers, car sales-men) are widely circulated. These first two features suggest a third, remi-niscent of our opening depiction of branding work: It is decentralized and open to a wide range of participants , including constituents with direct or indirect investment and passersby with little to none, although differential influence is likely. Fourth, it may be more or less acute in certain periods — a frenzy of contested meaning when a job is new or metamorphosing, for example, yet only moderate maintenance or fairly stabilized meaning at other times. However, Ashcraft contends that, in some degree, the social construction of occupations in relation to practitioners is occurring all the time in mundane communication. Fifth, though seemingly immaterial, the discursive struggle carries high material stakes . This is not to say that every representation matters —plenty will be localized and fleeting, evaporating with an exchange or two —but those which find their way into circulation are likely to ripple with material effects.
Finally, Ashcraft (2013) introduces the metaphor of a glass slipper to capture the tangible meanings that emerge from this discursive strug-gle over occupational identity. In effect, a glass slipper is both a con-structed, crystallized, and conditioned message that “this occupation is the natural province of these sorts of people” and the host of physical
and institutional arrangements and material dis/advantages which pro-ceed from that symbolic attachment. Ashcraft is clear that “these sorts of people” is a highly situated, intersectional construction that is not about gender and race in some separate or generic way (e.g., women’s work), but that enlists specific embodied social identities —a strain of white middle -class “polite” femininity with a regional twist, for instance, or “nerd” masculinity linked to white and Asian men with certain body types, technical talents, and social ineptitudes.
We can confidently say, for example, (a) that the glass slipper of commer-cial aviation in the U.S. has long favored men who appear white, hetero-sexual and fatherly, educated, professionally authoritative (e.g., clean -cut, well -spoken, calm and confident), and technically or scientifically skilled;
(b) that this symbolic attachment was strategically invented in the late 1920s to mid -1930s, when the promiscuous popular image of pilots — ranging wildly from rough, rowdy men to dainty, high -society women — received a thorough makeover to persuade the public that airline flying was a safe and legitimate profession; (c) that this glass slipper materialized in a range of supporting configurations and practices that became deeply institutionalized; and (d) that not only airline pilots but also the character of airline flying as a job gained extraordinary benefit from this symbolic attachment between work and particular bodies (for a detailed account, see Ashcraft & Mumby, 2004). Airline pilots provide but one of innumer-able illustrations, though not all would be so grandiose or definitive.
In sum, while we think of privilege and discrimination as something granted to, or hurled against, people , it is also directed toward occupa-tions , and affects their very constitution, largely on the basis of their alignment with particular social identities.
Weighing the Glass Slipper Through Relationality:
The Persistent Primacy of Discourse
Although the glass slipper account may appear to embrace the socioma-teriality of occupational identity, a closer look is illuminating. To be sure, social and material are interwoven in this conception. For example, social identities are thoroughly embodied and interactive, not only cognitive, and definitely not discrete, targets of identification. Certainly, the very notion of a glass slipper evokes something artificial and actual, fabricated through the “magic” of symbolic labor yet making real waves in the world.
But it is in that last point —and, especially, the way it claims the mate-rial impact of meaning —that the glass slipper departs from the relational ontologies explored in this book. Recall in Chapter 3 , for example, where affect theory approaches meaning’s materiality quite differently. There, discourse is material, another kind of stuff that occupies bodies and ani-mates scenes with the voltage of encounter. Language, interpretation, and meaning matter, but they do not enjoy ontological priority.
In contrast, the glass slipper puts meaning first by announcing that social construction is what makes the difference, which then comes to matter. The relationship between work and embodied social identities is up for symbolic grabs, and material configurations crop up around whatever meaning wins. Admittedly, occupational identity is more con-testable in some moments than others, and it is not open to all conceiv-able constructions. Materiality is posited as the reason why —an exigency or limit for discursive activity that foments and forecloses opportunity.
Materiality is thus acknowledged as influential, but the juiciest action unfolds through discursive activity, the vigor of which is further proven through subsequent material formations. Occupational identity is first about human signification constituting embodied subjectivities, and then about materialization.
Discursivity thus emerges as the realm of invention, with materiality as its henchman, a brute enforcer of sorts. We are reminded of the classical division of labor —“managers plan, workers implement the plan” —and the dualisms it activates, such as brain -brawn, civilized -primitive, and human -beast. No wonder, then, that “materiality itself is always already figured within a linguistic domain as its condition of possibility” (Barad, 2003, p. 801), ensuring an “implicit reinscription of matter’s passivity”
(p. 809).
While we are dwelling on occupations, it is worth noting that what we might call the discursive classes 1 —knowledge workers (e.g., scholars, especially communication researchers), media personnel (e.g., journalists
While we are dwelling on occupations, it is worth noting that what we might call the discursive classes 1 —knowledge workers (e.g., scholars, especially communication researchers), media personnel (e.g., journalists