Özdemir Kaya, Didem Derya (2019) ‘Love your job!’ A psychosocial research on affective labour in the Turkish fine-dining sector. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Drawing on a multi-sited psychosocial ethnography of the fine-dining sector in Istanbul, Turkey, this thesis explores the vicissitudes of love and affective labour under post-Fordism. It studies (i) discourses and imagery of love for culinary work circulating around the world, and their particular articulation in the Turkish fine dining context, (ii) how local actors are enticed by, act on, embody, reify and perform the ethos of love inscribed in these representations, and (iii) how the performance of love is implicated in cooks’ affective labour, subjectivity, wellbeing and working conditions. The thesis is based on a new research methodology developed through cross fertilisation between multi-sited organisational ethnography and psycho analytically inflected research. The fieldwork was designed to trace the ethos of love in discourses, images, artefacts and performances across culinary sites. Theoretical insights from Freud and Lacan are employed to interpret the ethnographic material, shedding light on its unconscious and affective facets. The thesis engages with post-Fordist thought, the affective labour debate and psychosocial studies. It contributes to the scholarly literature by providing a rigorous analysis and elaborate theory of symbolic identification with the post-Fordist ethos, imaginary identification with cultural representations, performance of these identifications as part of affective labour, and ambivalence toward one’s job. Intricate connections between these moments in the psychosocial process of subject formation are revealed and theorised. A novel and psychoanalytically-inflected definition of affective labour is also offered, which emerges as the performative work of reproducing individuals and collectives requiring human contact, interpersonal skills, emotion management, embodiment of cultural imagery and social roles, and love. The thesis disentangles the hegemonic ethos of post-Fordist work and develops a comprehensive theory of its affectivity.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor T Technology > TX Home economics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Restaurants -- Employees -- Turkey, Restaurants -- Employees -- Turkey -- Social conditions, Cooking, Turkish -- History, Cooking -- Turkey -- Psychological aspects
Official Date:	March 2019
Dates:	Date Event March 2019 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Warwick Business School
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Fotaki, Marianna ; Llewellyn, Nick
Sponsors:	Warwick Business School
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	[vii], 217 leaves : illustrations
Language:	eng

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