Our search for answers to these questions leads to three sep­arate but equally relevant discourses: one concerning labor, one concerning display, and one concerning emotion. Those who discuss labor often comment that nowadays most jobs call for a capacity to deal with people rather than with things, for more interpersonal skills and fewer mechan­ical skills. […]

The one area of her occupational life in which she might be “free to act,” the area of her own personality, must now also be managed, must become the alert yet obsequious instrument by which goods are distributed. — C. Wright Mills In a section in Das Kapital entitled “The Working Day,” Karl Marx examines […]

Warm thanks to those who helped: To Jeffrey and Judie Klein for their bracing but loving advice on a misty first draft; to Todd Gitlin for unfolding and hanging out my ideas with me; to Anne Machung for her support and won­drous line-by-line work in red ink; and to Ann Swidler who has shown me […]

I think my interest in how people manage emotions began when my parents joined the U. S. Foreign Service. At the age of twelve, I found myself passing a dish of peanuts among many guests and looking up at their smiles; diplomatic smiles can look different when seen from below than when seen straight on. […]