The Contradictions of Communicative Labor in Service Work

Abstract

Abstract:Boundaries dividing communication and culture from economy are fluid. The US services economy, with broad and deep growth, illustrates this fluidity. This paper applies theorizations of the relationship between communication and capitalism to a customer service job-training course for dislocated workers. A site of communication education, the course teaches students to be successful customer service representatives. Customer service communicative labor bridges production and consumption and, thus, is contradictory. The communicative labor translates the communication commonplace of mutuality into a self-other technology to affirm customers, and also requires a technology that objectifies customers. Job-training students resist this contradiction. Keywords: Communication Commonplaces; Communicative Labor; Job Training; Resistance; Service Work Article:Arbitrary boundaries dividing culture from economy are fluid.1 Business people speak of corporate cultures, product manufacturers engage in identity branding, and work, friendships, and play merge at knowledgeintensive companies.2 The "soft" sphere of values, ideas, and meaning and the "hard" domain of labor, wages, and profit seem to draw nearer to one another.One place to examine the increased intimacy between our forms of life and our forms of work is in the US services economy, where growth has been broad and deep.3 Though "services" is a catchall, 4 a thread running through the variety of services is the close, direct interpersonal interaction between customers and service providers. Interactive service work is a site of cultural and economic activity where the spheres and logics of production and consumption meet and blur. Beyond strictly economic outcomes, service interactions shape meanings and identities.Hence, consideration of interactive service work as a cultural and economic phenomenon transcends narrower organizational matters, particularly when set within enduring concerns for the place of communication in a democratic, civil society.5 A robust tradition of scholarship has analyzed the interaction between corporateoriented communication and the public sphere. A colonization model generally considers the impact of managerial or organizational rhetoric on the public sphere. 6 The key issue in these works is colonization of the lifeworld by the system, 7 of the public sphere by the corporation, 8 or of a value logos by an instrumental logos. 9A mutual constitution model uses "the increasing collapse of boundaries between the culture of organization and the organization of culture" to examine how culture and economy mutually constitute one another. 10 For example, cultural foundations animate new work practices, with these practices subsequently serving as models for corporations throughout US society.11 My general purpose in this study is to aid understanding of how developments in the world of work exist in a reflexive relation with the contours of culture and society. 12 I pursue this goal by applying recent theorizations of the relationship b...

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