Who can wear flip-flops to work? Ethnographic vignettes on aesthetic labour in precarity

Abstract

A central aspect of post-Fordist labour, many claim, is that the personal and the professional are increasingly intertwined. Especially in precarious urban sectors such as the interactive services, the aesthetic presentation of self is part of the product or service offered. Indeed, the separation between consumption and production, between private and work is no longer so strict for many, especially, in terms of aesthetics. Steering clear from sweeping statements about post-Fordism, however, this article offers an empirical examination based on ethnographic vignettes of one particular object that, perhaps surprisingly, appears in self-presentations for labour: the Adidas flip-flop. The Adidas flip-flop became salient in two studies in the Netherlands, in particular, one on the implementation of the Participation Act, which organizes welfare since 2015 and stipulates that it is forbidden for welfare recipients to ‘obstruct employment by dress or personal hygiene’. Case managers in Dutch welfare offices, it turned out, often cited the Adidas flip-flop as the ultimate example of an object that would obstruct employment and by consequence is cause for a welfare penalty. At the same time, the Adidas flip-flop is the preferred footwear of tech entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, a surprising fashion item on runways and the highly valued item of Mario, a respondent in one of the ethnographic vignettes. Across several locations, therefore, we ask what aesthetic and moral interpretations of the Adidas flip-flop are offered, by whom and in what context. This allows for (1) an innovative view of aesthetics for labour, (2) an assessment of what that tells us about post-Fordist labour markets and (3) an understanding of how post-Fordist aesthetic norms can be especially opaque though important for those in precarious positions.

Peer Feedback in Aesthetic Labour: Forms, Logics and Responses

“…Rather than giving direct instructions, peers tend to communicate norms through remarks, glances, gazes, jokes and gossip. General societal norms such as consistency, authenticity, dressing appropriately for your gender, and not looking too sexy were recurring in the interviews, but the exact content of these norms and the standards of evaluation are situational and depend on context (see also Van den Berg and Arts, 2019a). Feedback from peers thus further complicates aesthetic labour because the difficulty does not just lie in achieving a clearly defined standard, but also in learning and negotiating the contextual standards.…”

“…In other words, research on aesthetic labour practices and experiences has shifted from a focus on managerial control towards a more encompassing study of ‘the effort people make to work on their own appearance’ (Holla and Kuipers, 2016: 330). Not only employees, but also freelancers, job seekers and even the unemployed (Van den Berg and Arts, 2019a, 2019b) and stay-at-home mothers (De Benedictis and Orgad, 2017) perform aesthetic labour. Pressures to do so do not only come from employers and, arguably, surveillance is omnipresent (Elias et al, 2017: 14–17).…”

“…She makes the assumptions that her colleague is right in his opinion that her clothing is not suitable for the office, that he has the right to express this opinion to her, and that the negative consequences of wearing the ‘wrong’ outfit will bear down on her. This expresses, first, a general and typically gendered fear of not begin taken seriously (see also Elias et al, 2017: 35) and, second, the norm that a feminine leisurely style of clothing is incongruent with professionalism (which contrasts with the responses to the hoodies and flip-flops worn by men in the tech sector, as Van den Berg and Arts (2019a) point out). Moreover, the acceptance of the principle that others deservedly estimate your professionalism based on appearance endorses the notion that dress has true and inherent meaning.…”

The new discomforts of precarious workers: Wardrobe matter, insecurity and the temporality of calibration in dress work

“…In addition, many had middle class backgrounds. This limits our study in terms of what we can say about precarious workers’ navigations of the whiteness of work spaces, particular class dynamics, particular racialised aesthetics and the workings of racism in precarisation (but see previous studies on dress advice and welfare: Van den Berg, 2019; Van den Berg & Arts, 2019a, 2019b). However, based on our sample and our respondents’ narratives, we are able to analyse how workers that enjoy many privileges (whiteness, class background) and are usually not regarded as precarious do, in fact, have to navigate new kinds of insecurities in times of precarisation.…”