Symbolic Inclusion, Affective Exclusion: Emotional Governance in a Transnational Media Workplace

• In Event: Joint Roundtables: Social Psychology Section and Sociology of Emotions Section
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 3 - Symbolic Boundaries

Abstract

This paper argues that emotional inequality operates as a mechanism of governance within a transnational state-controlled media institution headquartered in Beijing. Drawing on 20 in-depth interviews with Belarusian and Russian journalists, along with six months of participant observation, I examine how foreign professionals recruited as symbols of international collaboration encountered structured limits to emotional recognition. Although formally included as representatives of global cooperation, participants described an organizational environment shaped by expectations of restraint, distance, and loyalty. Informal bonding, humor, or visible warmth were subtly discouraged, while composure and neutrality were treated as markers of professionalism. As one journalist remarked, “You don’t thank the spoon when you use it for eating your soup,” capturing a sense of being instrumentalized—visible and necessary, yet affectively peripheral. The analysis draws on Hochschild’s concept of emotional management, Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic violence and misrecognition, Foucault’s account of disciplinary power, and Lamont’s notion of recognition gaps. Rather than framing these dynamics as cultural misunderstanding, the paper conceptualizes them as emotional governance sustained through everyday monitoring, spatial organization, and anticipatory self-regulation. The findings demonstrate that exclusion operated not through formal barriers but through the regulation of affective expression. Foreign journalists occupied professional roles while lacking full emotional legitimacy—the institutional acknowledgment of their feelings and relational presence. Over time, this internalized self-surveillance contributed to alienation and burnout. By extending recognition gaps into the affective domain, the paper contributes to the sociology of emotions by advancing emotional legitimacy as a dimension of institutional inequality. Emotion is not incidental to organizational life; it is one of the mechanisms through which hierarchy is maintained in transnational contexts.

Author

• Viktoryia Sliaptsova, University of South Florida