construction of emotion work in paid home health care.
Published: 2006
Language: eng
Number of pages: 225
ISBN-13: 9780494220085
Description: "Emotion work" has emerged as an important dimension of interactive service work. This thesis examines emotion work in the particular environment of home health care, aiming to elaborate its nature and role from the perspective of personal support workers in relation to the structural context of the work.Between 1998 and 2000 open-ended interviews were conducted with gay male personal support workers (PSWs) providing paid care primarily to other gay men with AIDS and employed by a for-profit home care agency in a large urban setting. The use of a "theoretical contrast group" research design provided a unique analytical opportunity to identify core aspects of emotion work. Each participant was interviewed twice regarding the day-to-day experience of the work, his perceptions of the impact of the work on his non-work time and relationships, and his views about the influence of the political and economic contexts in which he worked. The research was approached from a "structural interactionist" theoretical perspective, merging features of symbolic interactionism and a concern with the structural social conditions of interaction. Data collection and analysis used a qualitative methodology that incorporated elements of grounded theory and discourse analysis.Through its focus on the worker's perspective this study demonstrates the significance of worker agency in conceptualizing emotion work. By shifting the analytic "point of reference" beyond the prevailing commodification/alienation thesis in the existing literature, a worker-centred perspective adds a new dimension to the study of emotion work.The study found these personal support workers were active agents in interpreting, constructing and achieving emotion work. Workers drew on discourses of client-centred care and professionalism to create a client-centred framework for managing their own and their clients' emotions. This framework constituted a lens for interpreting the expectations of the job and its consequences. Although workers used emotion work instrumentally to accomplish their work, its use was contingent on their social location and access to supportive discursive and material resources. Worker agency was constrained by an inherent paradox within the workers' construction of client-centred care and by organizational and systemic interpretations that conflicted with and undermined the worker's construction.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-01, Section: B, page: 0190.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2006.

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