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/
Accepted author manuscript, 548 KB, PDF document
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Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - ‘It’s just a job’
T2 - understanding emotion work, de-animalization and the compartmentalization of organized animal slaughter
AU - Hamilton, Lindsay
AU - McCabe, Darren John
N1 - 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/
PY - 2016/5
Y1 - 2016/5
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Animals
KW - commodification
KW - emotion
KW - emotionologies
KW - ethnography
KW - Meat Inspectors
KW - slaughterhouse
KW - subjectivity
KW - technology
U2 - 10.1177/1350508416629448
DO - 10.1177/1350508416629448
M3 - Journal article
VL - 23
SP - 330
EP - 350
JO - Organization
JF - Organization
SN - 1350-5084
IS - 3
ER -