4445 - Culture and Service Work: Relationships, Identities, Inequalities

Session Submission Type: Paper Session 100min

Description

Service work is distinguished by an emphasis on relating to others, whether they are customers, clients or patients. The effort to relate invokes identities and generates inequalities. Culture can be said to inform this substrate of relational activity but the cultural dimension of the work is often taken for granted. This session seeks to unearth and subject this foundation of caring and services to critical scrutiny. We invite papers from scholars bringing a cultural lens to the specificities of service labor. We aim to engage a conversation about the cultural norms, ethics, symbols and codes that shape the modes of relating, identities and inequalities.

Sub Unit

• Section on the Sociology of Culture / Culture and Service Work: Relationships, Identities, Inequalities

Session Organizer

• Eileen M. Otis, University of Oregon

Presider

• Tongyu Wu, Zhejiang University

Individual Presentations

• A Matter of Confianza: Searching for Service Work in Nicaragua - Lindsey McKay Ibanez, Washburn University

• Intimacies, Authenticities, and Postcolonial Imaginaries in South African Township Hospitality - Annie Hikido, Colby College

• Making Good Loans and Creditworthy Women: Relational Work in India’s Microfinance Industry - Smitha Radhakrishnan, Wellesley College

• What a Mediminder Does: Arranging Autonomy Through Technologies of Care - Adrianna Bagnall-Munson, Columbia University