The Reproduction of Inequalities Through Emotional Capital: The Case of Socializing Low-Income Black Girls

Abstract

The concept of emotional capital suggests that adults transfer emotion management skills to children in ways that are consequential for the social reproduction of inequalities. Using ethnographic data from a popular after-school program, this study analyzes the emotional capital transmitted to low-income black girls by staff. They passed on four aspects of emotional capital: stifling attitude, being emotionally accountable for peers, sympathizing with adult authority figures, and emotional distancing from cultural "dysfunction." Staff intended to teach girls to manage their emotions as a way to counteract racism, but the socialization largely promoted emotional deference, thereby reinforcing racialized, classed, and gendered ideologies.Emotion management is the power-infused way individuals cultivate particular feelings among others or themselves. It entails "stir[ring] up a feeling we wish we had, and at other times [trying] to block or weaken a feeling we wish we did not have" (Hochschild 1983, p. 43). In Arlie Hochschild's The Managed Heart, company scripts increasingly determined how workers were supposed to think and feel, alienating them from their true emotions. Since then, research has focused on the identity-related and emotional consequences of adults' emotional labor, but Hochschild said that individuals learn to manage emotions far earlier-in childhood. What's more, she argued that adults socialize children to manage emotions in classed and gendered ways that lead to inequality along class and gender lines. Spencer Cahill's (1999) and Diane Reay's (2000) notion of "emotional capital" further offers a framework to connect emotions to social reproduction through socialization of youth. Studies on socialization and emotions suggest competing social processes may be at work. If only individuals from dominant groups learn a detached emotional capital

Theorizing emotional capital

“…Such a conceptualization reduces capital to markers of a mother's concern for her child. Certainly a mother's concern is an important aspect of socialization, but measuring emotional capital through concern alone is inconsistent with prior definitions (Froyum 2010;Thoits 2004) and limits the focus to rationally articulated emotions. Without clarity about how parents impart knowledge of emotion norms, skills, or experiential capacities to their children, the links among a parent's emotional capital, the mobilization of that capital, and children's accumulation of capital remain obscure.…”

“…A third gap in the literature on emotional capital has been a failure to theorize it as an accumulated resource gained in early socialization-a process constrained by social location-while also susceptible to modification in educational (Froyum 2010) and occupational (Cahill 1999) settings. Socialization refers to the Bquasi-magical^pro-cesses (Bourdieu 1990, p. 58) through which individuals form identities, values, beliefs, and habitual ways of being and doing.…”

“…She defines emotional capital as Bknowledge, contacts, and relations as well as access to emotionally valued skills and assets^(p. 148). Froyum (2010) extends this definition to see emotional capital as an interpersonal resource that Btreats emotions and their management as skills or habits that translate into social advantages^(p. 39). Knowledge of situationally appropriate emotional experiences and expressions complements the skills needed to manage emotions.…”

Citation Impact of Women in Social Work

“…Foremost, gender inequalities are often cited using a top-down approach as a way to highlight various ways that they are formed and maintained (Froyum, 2010). A perennial point noted about this was the nature versus nurture debate (Collins, 2005;Jeanes, 2007;Parcheta, Kaifi, & Khanfar, 2013;Wiranto, 2013).…”

Risk and Emotion Among Healthy Volunteers in Clinical Trials

“…Existing research on class has a strong focus on the emotional resources that children gain from parents and education (Cahill 1999; Froyum 2010; Gillies 2006; Reay 2004). Research on race has predominantly looked at the emotional experiences and management of African American men and women in professional occupations, including college professors, airline pilots, and flight attendants (Evans 2013; Harlow 2003; Wingfield 2010).…”