Most studies on identity work have overlooked the corporeal quality of occupational life. Despite calls to attempt such engagement, little is known about the role of the body in occupations for which corporeal elements are central in the affirmation of identity. This study aims to answer such calls by providing a detailed ethnography of police work. Focusing on four bodily practices, we demonstrate how fitness, intimidation, cleanliness, and toughness are central elements to the officers’ construction of self. We thereby highlight the notion of physical selfhood as a way to understand the body/identity nexus among police officers and their capacity to resist new work requirements. We view bodies through a lens of resistance, rather than docility and compliance as much previous research has done. We aim to contribute to scholarship on identity work by portraying the politicization of bodies as a powerful component, thereby helping professionals to deflect some important institutional pressures affecting their work.

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While scholars have demonstrated that emotions play a central role in cognition, behavior, and decision making, most of the studies on emotions in work contexts show that emotions, or their expression, are often suppressed. We thus investigated how workers in high-stress work environments deal with emotions and remain functional by focusing on the range of extrinsic regulation strategies used by workers in these environments. Drawing from participant observations and in-depth, semistructured interviews, we show how police officers are flexible in their choices of emotion-regulation strategies and how contextual factors emerge as the crux of this process. We contribute to the understanding of regulatory flexibility-defined as the process of matching emotion regulation strategies to environmental circumstances as they unfold in real work situations-by identifying two main enabling factors: coregulation and third party interference.