Aesthetic Labour

Chris Warhurst is Director of the Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick. Motivated by wanting to see better scientific and policy-maker understanding of work and employment, Chris is an Associate Research Fellow of SKOPE at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and a Trustee of the Tavistock Institute in London. He was previously Professor of Work and Organisational Studies at the Sydney University Business School and Founding Director of the Scottish Centre for Employment Research at Strathclyde University Business School. He is currently Chair of the Editorial Management Committee for the journal Human Relations, co-editor of Palgrave′s Critical Perspectives on Work and Employment book series and an Editorial Advisory Board Member for Research in the Sociology of Work. Previously, he was co-editor of the journal Work, Employment and Society. His research expertise centres on job quality, skills and aesthetic labour. He uses mixed methods in his research, which ranges over small-scale qualitative case studies to national surveys. He has secured nearly 70 research awards from national research councils, government, employers, trade unions and charities etc.  Dennis Nickson is Professor of Service Work and Employment at University of Strathclyde, and was Head of Department from 2008-2014. His primary research interests centre on work and employment issues in interactive service work, with a particular concentration on the retail and hospitality industries. His work has been published in journals such as Work, Employment and Society, Human Resource Management (US), the Human Resource Management Journal, the International Journal of Human Resource Management, Industrial Relations Journal and Economic and Industrial Democracy, and he is Editor-in-Chief of Employee Relations.

A remarkable contribution by two outstanding researchers.  This is an important topic which, in their words, was born in the sociological imagination and developed through rigorous empirical research.  The book is well-written and very accessible.  I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in the realities of the world of work.

• Chapter 1 Appearances MattersChapter 2 The Aestheticization of the Economy and SocietyChapter 3 If You Look the Part, You’ll Get the JobChapter 4 Ready to WorkwearChapter 5 Body Talk: ‘signalling with more than looks’Chapter 6 Irritable Vowel SyndromeChapter 7 Beauty and the Beast: The ‘Dark Side’ of Aesthetic LabourChapter 8 The Future of Aesthetic Labour