This paper brings together theoretical work on gender, caregiving, and illness to investigate emotion work performed in response to a spouse’s physical illness. We analyzed qualitative in-depth interview data with 36 individuals in 18 long-term heterosexual marriages (N=36) wherein one or both spouses experienced illness. Findings indicated that men and women performed, received, and interpreted their emotion work in gendered ways. Women with an ill spouse performed emotion work more often than men. Women who were ill themselves often performed emotion work to relieve the burden on their spouse—a dynamic not found among men who were ill. When women performed emotion work, they constructed this work as a natural propensity. Men who did not perform emotion work constructed themselves as protective and problem-solving. These findings point to underlying intra- and inter-personal processes that may help to explain why women experience higher levels of caregiver burden and depression than do men. / text

Background: Breastfeeding is globally recognised as a gold standard of nutrition, recommended for the first six months of an infant’s life. Despite its benefits, most women in Ghana do not breastfeed, as recommended by World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations International Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF). Aim: To gain in-depth understanding of first-time Ghanaian mother lived experience of breastfeeding. Design/Method: A longitudinal qualitative design was adopted, underpinned by the hermeneutic phenomenological approach, as described by van Manen (1990). The study explored the lived experiences of thirty first-time women recruited from antenatal clinic. A series of three semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted; the first in late pregnancy, the second in the first week following childbirth and the final one between four and six months postpartum. Findings: Inductive thematic analysis informed by van Manen (1990) and principles of hermeneutic interpretation allowed the emergence of four main themes: the ‘Breastfeeding Assumption,' Breastfeeding as Women’s Business,’ the Postnatal Experience of Breastfeeding and ‘Family as Enabler or Disabler’. Within the context of this study, breastfeeding is expressed as an activity within the family and social environment. The overall phenomenon that emerged was ‘Social Conformity’. This demonstrates an understanding of the breastfeeding experience suffused with emotions as women project an image of themselves as successful breast feeders in order to conform to family and social expectations. Conclusion: Findings from the study demonstrated the multifactorial dimensions of breastfeeding. Most importantly, it was identified that first-time breastfeeding women use emotion work to cope with their experience of breastfeeding, within the social context. It was suggested that midwives play a pivotal role in helping women develop realistic expectations prior to breastfeeding. Furthermore encouraging family centered education that promotes holistic support for women. The findings therefore suggested the need for better antenatal education based on evidence-based practice. Breastfeeding women require individualised support that assesses their emotional needs and offers encouragement. Developing policies that ensure training of midwives and breastfeeding advocates was recommended. Future research could explore the impact of these interventions on breastfeeding practices, helping first time women to breastfeed effectively.

This thesis takes as its starting point the dramaturgical metaphor of the world as a stage, which is used in sociological role theories. These theories often presume what stage acting is about in order to use it as a simile for every day acting. My intention is to investigate how stage actors actually work with their roles, in particular how they work with emotions, and how it affects their private emotions. The thesis draws on participant observation and interviews with actors during the rehearsal phase of two productions at a large theatre in Sweden. The results show that the inhabiting of a role for the stage is more difficult and painstaking than has been assumed in role theories so far. Shame and insecurity are common, particularly in the start up phase of the rehearsals. Interestingly, these emotions do not disappear with growing experience, but instead become recognized and accepted as part of the work process. The primary focus is the interplay between the actors' experience and expression of emotions, often described in terms of surface and deep acting, concepts which are elaborated and put into a process perspective. Analysis of the rehearsal process revealed that actors gradually decouple the privately derived emotional experiences that they use to find their way into their characters from the emotions that they express on the stage. Thus private experiences are converted to professional emotional experiences and expressions, triggered by situational cues. When the experience has been expressed the physical manifestation can be repeated with a weaker base in a simultaneous experience, since the body remembers the expression. It is important though, that the emotional expression is not completely decoupled from a concomitant experience; then the expression looses its vitality. The ability to professionalize emotions makes the transitions in and out of emotions less strenuous but can infiltrate and cause problems in the actors' intimate relations.

This thesis aims to investigate and illuminate lived experiences, cultural representations, and organizational conditions that influence the way therapists in Swedish psychiatry receive and treat migrant women. This overall aim is pursued through two distinct but interlinked part-studies. The aim of the first of these is to examine migrant women’s perceptions of mental (ill-) health along with their actual experiences of therapy in Swedish psychiatry. The aim of the second part is to describe and explain how therapists, in their organizational work conditions, interpret and experience their professional encounters with migrant women.   The thesis is based on qualitative interviews with twelve migrant women and eleven therapists in psychiatry. The result show that the migrant women experience health and mental health through a sense of belonging. Non-belonging, isolation and estrangement will point to the other direction i.e. not having health. The migrant women may gain a sense of belonging to society through therapy. However there are also obstructions on this path to belonging. The therapists, in psychiatry, seeing migrant women are doing emotion work comparable to physical labor. As the production is expected to increase due to marketing principles it puts a demand of acceleration on the therapists emotion work. They, thus have to find strategies to manage their emotion work. Everyday resistance thus becomes a way to gain emotional energy and to avoid emotional numbing and burnout. It is also gives openings to be content with their work with their patients and thereby to be able to offer an adequate reception of migrants into treatment in psychiatry. The thesis contributes to the gap in research by focusing on the borderlands between migrant women’s lived experiences of social suffering and the receiving therapists’ possibility to meet their migrant patients’ request. / This thesis aims to investigate and illuminate lived experience and organizational conditions that influence the way therapists in Swedish psychiatry receive and treat migrant women. This overall aim is divided into two separate but interlinked part-studies. The main body of the thesis is based on interviews with migrant women as well as therapists in psychiatry. The result show that the migrant women are searching for belonging in the host society. One way of searching for belonging is through therapy in psychiatry. However the work pace in health care and psychiatry is increasing and the therapists are struggling with giving a decent reception of migrants. In order to manage the heavy emotion work the therapists oppose the accelerating work pace by doing resistance in their everyday work. This thesis contributes to gap in research on the borderlands between lived experiences of social suffering odf migrant women as well as the lived experiences of the work conditions that make it possible to care for another person

The aim of this work is to understand, from a perspective of sociology of emotions, how employees within the health care sector experience their working environment and the conditions. By analysing how these experiences shape the interviewees’ perceptions of the quality of their working environment, the dissertation also seeks to arrive at an understanding of what the contributing factors are for their choice to either remain in or leave the organizations in which they are employed. This study has been conducted as a qualitative interview study. Vocational categories represented in the study are doctors, nurses, assistant nurses, midwives, and physical therapists. The analysis has employed an abductive approach, in which empirical sensitivity, interpretation, and theory are combined. The interpretative and empirical focus, and the theory used concentrate largely on emotions, and the resulting analysis is, thusly, a contribution within the sociology of emotions. The empirical analysis is organized in three chapters, describing and analysing three main areas: dissatisfaction with public organisations, social embeddedness, and emotional labour. In terms of results the dissertation demonstrates that workplaces undergoing repeated changes without strong support from the staff are experienced as bad, while workplaces where the employees feel affirmed and competent are experienced as good. However, it is not working environment and conditions alone that are meaningful for the interviewees, but so is the balance between work and private life, as well as the balance between social relations in and outside of the workplace. In addition, the emotional culture in workplaces and among colleagues is of crucial importance for the interviewees’ perceptions of their work. It is suggested that this pertains to the fact that health care work constitutes a specific type of emotional labour which, in the dissertation, is described as harbouring work. Hence, more than a matter of working environment and conditions, the interviewees’ experiences depend more upon factors such as the degree of embeddedness in social relationships, the emotional climate in the workplace, and the possibility to form a buffer culture. Moreover, it is these factors that underpin how and why employees choose to remain in or leave their workplaces.

Using autoethnography, combined with qualitative data collected through innovative online methods, this dissertation explores the experience of navigating the emotional geographic space of graduate school for non-visibly disabled students such as learning disabilities, and mental health disabilities at two southern Ontario universities. Autoethnography merges tenets of ethnography and autobiography to allow researchers to prioritize their own experiences as valuable data and “making it possible to construct the ethnographic scenes that happened and the fictional scenes that didn’t—but could have” (Ellis, 2004, p. xx). As such, the work produced by autoethnography is “expressive rather than representational” (Kiesinger, 1998, p. 74) This dissertation is a narrative based on real and fictionalized events told through dialogue between the author, a composite character, and six co-participant graduate students who provide their stories through e-mails and a collaborative blog. Academic literature, observations, areas for future research, and recommendations are woven into the dialogue and layered throughout the dissertation in non-dialogic sections. Davidson and Milligan (2004) posits, “Our emotional relations and interactions weave through and help form the fabric of our unique personal geographies” (p. 523). By focusing on unacknowledged and misunderstood “emotional labor” (managing emotions in paid work environments) and emotion work (managing emotions in unpaid work environments) (Hochschild, 1983), this dissertation demonstrates how non-visibly disabled students must perform “extra work” that distinguishes their experiences and the effort required to navigate the spaces and places of academia. With a specific focus on the process of acquiring and implementing academic and workplace accommodations, it draws on the literatures and theoretical insights of emotional geography and critical disability studies to demonstrate how these disabilities are misunderstood and stigmatized, which results in an accommodation process that is both humiliating and inadequate to support non-visibly disabled graduate students. Thus, understanding the emotional geography of the accommodation process is vital to creating effective academic and workplace accommodations for non-visibly disabled graduate students. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This project asks how fat stigma impacts customers' and retail workers' experiences shopping and working in plus-size clothing stores. Interview data highlight how customers and workers engage in emotional labor, emotion work, and aesthetic labor to manage emotions about the body and fat stigma. Moreso, it explores the commercialization of the body-positivity movement by analyzing the use of body-positive branding and marketing. A content analysis explores the website and social media presence of a contemporary plus-size store, Torrid, which is an example of a company engaging in body-positive branding and marketing. While results vary between the main website and social media accounts, they reveal that Torrid engages with customers in an inclusive body-positive tone and with intimate/friendly language via their marketing; however, Torrid does not fulfil its body-positive intentions when it comes to body and size inclusivity of its models. Interview data also highlight that customers do not find plus-size retail stores to be inclusive and body-positive spaces. Customers report they lack physical accessibility, affordable clothing, stock of extended sizes, or clothing for individuals with diverse gender identities. Customers and workers engage in emotion work, emotional labor, and aesthetic labor to negotiate between style, affordability, and accessibility.

Emotions play a profound role in the workplace, especially in the human service profession. Service agents, for example educators, are expected to express socially desired emotions in a service interaction with learners. This direct face-to-face contact with learners requires a lot of emotions and in order to advance educational goals, teachers perform Emotion Work. Factors like the individual factor Emotional Intelligence and organisational factors like Job Autonomy, Supervisor- and Co-worker Support have a profound impact on how Emotion Work is experienced. Emotion Work has an influence on the experience of Well-Being. The objective of this research is to determine the relationship between Emotion Work, Emotional Intelligence, Organisational Factors and Well-Being within secondary schools in South Africa. The research method consists of a literature review and an empirical study. A cross-sectional survey design was used to collect the data. A non-probability convenience sample was taken from 257 educators in high schools in the Gauteng Province. The Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale (SEIS), The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES), Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (English version) (OBLI). Scale from the Frankfurt Emotion Work Scales (FEWS) and Organisational Factor Scale were used as measuring instruments. The statistical analysis was carried out with the SPSS-programme. The statistical methods utilised in the article consisted of descriptive statistics, Cronbach alpha coefficients, factor analysis (using a principle components analysis), Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients and multiple regression analyses were used to analyse the data. A factor analysis confirmed two factors for Burnout, consisting of Exhaustion and Mental Distance; Emotion Work also consists of two factors namely Positive Emotion Work and Negative Emotion Work, Emotional Intelligence (four factors) consisting of Mood Regulation/Optimism, Emotion Management/Social Skills, Emotion Appraisal and Emotion Detachment. The OF (Organisational Factors) and UWES both showed acceptable internal consistencies. The analysis of Pearson correlations in this study showed that Exhaustion is negatively correlated with Job Autonomy, Supervisory Support and Engagement, while positively correlated with Negative Emotion Work and Mental Distance. Mental Distance is negatively correlated with Job Autonomy, Supervisory Support and Engagement and positively correlated with Negative Emotion Work. Engagement is positively correlated to Mood Regulation/Optimism, Emotion Management/Social Skills, Co-worker Support and Supervisory Support. Emotion Management/Social Skills is positively correlated to Emotion Appraisal and lastly Supervisor Support is positively correlated to Co-worker Support. A regression analysis with Engagement as dependent variable indicated that Positive Emotion Work, Negative Emotion Work, Mood Regulation/Optimisrn and Supervisor Support in an educator environment were the best predictors of Engagement. With Exhaustion as the dependent variable, Negative Emotion Work, Job Autonomy and Supervisor Support were the best predictors of Exhaustion and with Mental Distance as the dependent variable, Negative Emotion Work, Job Autonomy and Supervisor Support were the best predictors of Mental Distance. Recommendations are made for the educators' profession and for future research purposes. / Thesis (M.Com. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007

The purpose of this study is to conduct an investigation of the lived experiences of asthma and sporting embodiment in non-elite sportspeople of different ages and levels of ability, involved in a range of sports. Asthma is characterised as a breathing disorder and the aim of this research is to add to embodied literature by providing ‘fleshy’ realities of the moving, sweating, sensuous sporting body, which holds meanings, purposes and interests for people who experience sport with asthma. Breathing is not only a physiological process, but it is also cultural and people may deal with their asthma symptoms in ways that reflect cultural attitudes embedded in sport. This qualitative study addresses five exploratory questions: 1) How do sportspeople experience asthma? 2) How do sportspeople negotiate their asthma and sporting identities? 3) How do emotional dimensions play a role in sportspeople’s asthma and sporting experiences? 4) How do perceptions of environment and illness shape one another by examining the relationship between the body, the self and environment? 5) What is the role of trauma in sportspeople with asthma? 6) How do key senses (sound) play a role in sportspeople’s asthma and embodied sporting experiences? Through a symbolic-interactionsist and phenomenological-inspired approach, this research places emphasis on the mind-body-self nexus in relation to sensory experiences with a focus upon the centrality of the ‘visceral’ body in the relationship between self-consciousness and the self. A bodily disruption (e.g., asthmatic attack) is likely to heighten awareness of the body-self and contingency and may amplify how sportspeople listen to their own embodied selves when engaged in sporting action. Therefore, sportspeople may become even more acutely aware of, and attuned to, their breathing in ways that link the physiological, the psychological, the social and the environment. This may lead to a permanent re-ordering/negotiation of identities (e.g., athletic identity - asthma identity) through ‘emotion work’ and ‘somatic (auditory) work’ in which a concern with the body is central. The findings are represented as a typology consisting of Conformers, Contesters and Creators, which may be used as a framework to assist health care and sporting professionals in developing more appropriate and effective rehabilitation regimes for sportspeople, in order to improve the quality of treatment and outcomes.

Thesis (M.Com. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.