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Events
Jun. 30 | 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies due
Jun. 30 | 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies Teaching, Advising, and Program Development due
Oct. 1 | Travel Grants for Graduate Students
For submission guidelines, click here
Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Erickson, Karla. "Paid to Care: Selling Service, Smiles and Community in American Restaurants," American Studies and Feminist Studies, University of Minnesota, July 2004.
“Paid to Care” explores service work as a link between traditionally private social interaction and the market economy. This dissertation critically examines the cultural consequences of the shift to a service society by examining how concern is commoditized, gender is performed, and service is personalized in local family restaurants. Drawing on three years of participant observation and interviews with workers, customers and managers, Paid to Care addresses the consequences of moving the self-care and social customs surrounding food outside the home, subsequently expanding our understanding of how Americans produce and consume familiarity, intimacy and community. The shift to a service economy takes place against the backdrop of a society characterized by the weakening of traditional modes of community building and identity formation such as neighborhoods, churches and even families. In lieu of these traditional forms of association, people increasingly turn to consumer culture to experience a sense of belonging. The growing service sector invites Americans to turn to the marketplace to fulfill desires that were previously understood as private concerns. I argue that the labor performed in restaurants is emblematic of a larger cultural shift, defined as the commoditization of care, which entails moving needs for care and concern that were previously considered private into the public sphere, placing not only service but also emotional needs up for sale in the marketplace. Paid to Care examines service exchanges from the vantage point of workers, customers, and managers, by considering the identities available to workers and consumers in the growing service society, the potential benefits of emotional labor, the feminization of loyalty, the use of bodies and overt sexual play at work, training and the construction of ambiance, and finally, the challenges of insider research. This study focuses on women s labor at the center of these cultural and economic transformations, contributing new findings regarding the blending of public and private spheres under late capitalism by highlighting the choices people make within the confines of capitalism to create meaning in their lives, and to form connections with one another.
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