Commodifying Passion

Abstract

What does it mean to love one's job? This article argues that for an understanding of power and agency in the labour market, particularly in the service and retail industry, passion needs to be given more consideration. Building on ethnographic observations and interviews with sales assistants and store managers within fashion retailing, the reasons for employees to perform ‘aesthetic labour’ are examined. Aesthetic labour generally refers to work practices in which workers are expected to conform to particular corporate aesthetics, management ideals or brand identities. The article argues that embodied work practices must be related to workers’ own motivations. The purpose is to examine why so many people working as sales staff in the field of fashion retail claim to ‘love’ their work and why ‘passion’ is considered so important? The findings of this work are that employees are driven by emotions and affects and that aesthetic labour relies on ‘the commodification of passion’. Workers dressed and talked the way they did because they identified affectively with the self-organizing principles of these retail fields. Passion made sense to the interviewees because it gave meaning to being a working subject on the neo-liberal labour market.

KEYWORDS:

• retailing
• passion
• agency
• aesthetic labour
• service work
• ethnography
• post-Fordism