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    Rights statement: The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Organization, 23 (3), 2015, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2015 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Organization page: http://org.sagepub.com/ on SAGE Journals Online: http://online.sagepub.com/

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‘It’s just a job’: understanding emotion work, de-animalization and the compartmentalization of organized animal slaughter

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>05/2016
<mark>Journal</mark>Organization
Issue number3
Volume23
Number of pages21
Pages (from-to)330-350
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This article contributes to an understanding of the nexus between humans and animals by drawing on ethnographic research conducted in a British chicken factory and, more particularly, by exploring the emotional subjectivity of Meat Inspectors employed by the Food Standards Agency to oversee quality, hygiene and consumer safety within this plant. We argue that these Inspectors displayed a complex range of often contradictory emotions from the ‘mechanized’ to the ‘humanized’ and link this, in part, to the technocratic organization of factory work that compartmentalizes and sanitizes slaughter. This serves to de-animalize and commodify certain animals, which fosters an emotional detachment from them. In contrast to research which suggests that emotions switch off and on in a dialectic between violence and non-violence, or that we are living in a post-emotional society, we elucidate the co-existence, fluidity and range of emotions that surface and submerge at work. While contributing to the extant literature on ‘emotionologies’, we add new insights by considering how emotions play out in relation to animals.

Bibliographic note

The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Organization, 23 (3), 2015, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2015 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Organization page: http://org.sagepub.com/ on SAGE Journals Online: http://online.sagepub.com/