Invisible Bodies and Disembodied Voices? Identity Work, the Body and Embodiment in Transnational Service Work

Abstract

This article explores the linkages between identity work, the body and embodiment in transnational call centres. Identity work, defined as the masking of national identity to imply proximity to the western client, provides an opportunity for the analyst to examine workplace embodiment in a global context. Qualitative data from an ethnographic study of two global outsourcing firms in India (2010-2012) explicated these processes. Narrative accounts suggest that call centre workers are routinely made aware of the body as a target of discipline, for instance in training; by working on their own bodies (including posture, dress, voice modulation and other forms of body regulation); by working on the bodies of others (through voicebased interactions) and by using embodied images of Americans to contextualize the service provided. In this way, the western client is visualized by the Indian call worker through corporeal imaginaries that concomitantly construct, subvert and resist the West-Rest dichotomy in service relations. Far from being disembodied, this study demonstrates that the body is central to global service work.

Raciolinguistics and the aesthetic labourer

“…Cowie, 2007;Mirchandani, 2012Mirchandani, , 2015Nath, 2011;Poster, 2007;Raghuram, 2013;Taylor and Bain, 2005). Apart from accent neutralization, workers further disguise their identities through taking up western aliases and making reference to western culture, both of which are intended to make callers believe that they are receiving service from someone in their home country (Nath, 2011;Poster, 2007;Rajan-Rankin, 2018). These above-mentioned practices are what Poster (2007: 273) calls national identity management, a labour tactic in which Indian racial/national identity is 'considered malleable and subject to managerial control'.…”

Radicalizing diversity (research): Time to resume talking about class

“…over lower‐rank ones (Zanoni, Janssens, Benschop, & Nkomo, 2010). Despite some increased attention for the lower‐ranks in the wake of the 2008 crisis (e.g., Cohen & Wolkowitz, 2018; Rajan‐Rankin, 2017; Soni‐Sinha & Yates, 2013), these studies remain today both numerically and theoretically marginal (van Eck, Dobusch & van den Brink, forthcoming). Scully and Blake‐Beard's (2006, p. 448) call for research on class that “provoke[s] a rethinking of how work gets done and who (at the juncture of many social identities) gets the returns” remains relevant.…”

Symbolic violence in embodying customer service work across the urban/rural divide

“…Lan (2003, p. 29) identified ways in which service workers at cosmetics stores in Taiwan used their bodies as a tool for "enhanced femininity" through a "disciplined body" (standardizing body language), a "mirroring body" (adorning cosmetics products to produce beautiful images for customers), and a 40 -DOSHI "communicative body" (claiming expertise as "beauty counselors"). Rajan-Rankin (2017) found that call-center workers in India enacted "corporeal imaginaries" (p. 10) of American customers and accordingly adjusted their body (voice) to mend cultural differences. In other words, non-Western workers appropriated embodied Westernness to serve their Western customers.…”

“…Since the turn of the century, scholars have investigated various identity lines structuring power in customer–worker dynamics in service work, ranging from male/female (Lan, 2003) to the masculine/feminine (Cohen & Wolkowitz, 2018; McDowell, 2009), the White/Black/Asian (Kang, 2010), the Western/non‐Western (Rajan‐Rankin, 2017), and the middle/lower class (Kang, 2010). This body of research has not only shown the demarcations or divides between the seeming opposites, but also highlighted how one (male/masculine/White/Western/middle class) is structurally privileged over the other (female/feminine/Black/non‐Western/lower class) in service work.…”